


Take It from the Top

by hyperlydian



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M, Stripping, allkpop, dick piercings, jongin being a dick, sehun being sehun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2018-11-07 16:03:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11062374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyperlydian/pseuds/hyperlydian
Summary: Sehun wakes up and realizes he's made a mistake. Sehun wakes up and realizes he's made a mistake. Sehun wakes up and realizes he's made a mistake. Sehun wakes up and realizes he's made a mistake. (Sehun wakes up and-- oh.)





	Take It from the Top

**Author's Note:**

> written in collaboration with maayacola
> 
> whelps. this happened. surprise! (~23k)
> 
> reposted with maia's permission for your enjoyment (hopefully)

#

**0**

The television is too loud. Sehun licks at dry lips and tries to focus on his math homework. Junmyeon is sitting next to him, leaning far closer than Sehun would like and mouth-breathing as he tries to puzzle out Sehun’s calculus.

“I think you need to find the derivative?” Junmyeon says, and Sehun rolls his eyes.

“Even I know that’s wrong,” Jongin says from across the table, where he’s eating his fourth ice cream sandwich. The chocolate stains the corners of his lips and makes him look even dumber than usual. “And I slept through approximately one-hundred percent of calculus class.”

“Jongin,” Sehun says, setting his mechanical pencil down on the table, “you didn’t take calculus. You never made it past trigonometry.”

“So,” Jongin says, shoving the last bite of ice cream into his mouth, “the fact that I know that’s wrong means it’s _really_ obvious.”

“Well-” Junmyeon starts, but they’re interrupted by loud shrieks of laughter from the living room. Sehun knows that Baekhyun, Kyungsoo, and Chanyeol are watching ‘Star King’ together, but Chanyeol’s boisterous laugh is loud enough to drown the other two out.

Normally, Sehun doesn’t mind Chanyeol’s laugh. Tonight though, with at least an hour’s worth of math homework ahead of him, thanks to long comeback rehearsals and procrastination, and a monstrous headache, Chanyeol’s laugh is more like nails on a chalkboard than a cheery soundtrack to their evening.

“Sehun,” Chanyeol calls out to him loudly, even though he’s only sitting at the kitchen table less than ten feet away, “Jonghyun-hyung is doing a-”

“It’s unbelievable how much I don’t care,” Sehun says, not even bothering looking up from his notebook.

“No, but-” Chanyeol starts cackling again at something on-screen, slapping at his thighs as his laugh echoes through the whole dorm, exacerbating Sehun’s heachache. Sehun rubs at his temples, narrowing his eyes at the jumble of letters and numbers, and wishes for silence. As soon as that thought crosses his mind, Chanyeol’s laughter explodes again, and Sehun exhales loudly in frustration.

Junmyeon pats his hand consolingly and smiles. “Math is hard.” Jongin snorts and gets out of his chair, walking out of the kitchen to join the others in the living room.

“It’s not that math is hard,” Sehun says. “It’s that no one can get anything done when it’s too loud to think.”

“You don’t usually have problems with it.” Junmyeon’s looking at Sehun’s assignment again, eyes crossed like he’s looking at hieroglyphics. “Are you sure this is right-side up?”

Chanyeol is repeating everything Kang Hodong says now, trying to imitate the comedian’s tone as his voice gets increasingly louder with every line, and Sehun can feel the edges of his patience fraying.

“Chanyeol, could you keep it down?” Sehun says it at a normal volume, but it’s lost in the commotion, swallowed up in Chanyeol’s noise.

Irritation crashing into him like a wave, Sehun stands up from the table, chair scraping, and slams his textbook closed. Junmyeon looks up at him startled as the cryptic problems disappear from in front of him, and Baekhyun spins around completely to look at him. Kyungsoo and Chanyeol follow suit, Chanyeol’s eyes round and confused. Chanyeol looks cute, but Sehun is irritated enough that it only seems vapid.

“Did you finish your homework, Sehun?” he asks, his lips parted and his eyebrows high on his forehead. “That was fast!”

“No, Chanyeol, I didn’t finish,” Sehun says, words slow and measured. His head is killing him, and even Chanyeol’s speaking voice, overly loud for indoors, grates. Sehun snatches his notebook and textbook off the table, and scowls.

“Where are you-”

He cuts Chanyeol off, because he really is annoyed and it’s Chanyeol’s fault he can’t concentrate. “I’m really sick of you,” Sehun says, “so I’m going to bed.”

With that, he turns around and heads for his room, making sure to slam the door. Deciding to call the math homework a loss, Sehun flops face-first into his bed, and tries to fall asleep before Junmyeon can come in and guilt him into an apology.

#

**1**

Sehun wakes up with the same pounding headache he went to sleep with, Junmyeon hovering over him with a disappointed frown on his his face.

“Am I late?” Sehun mumbles groggily, because Junmyeon is already dressed, hair wet from the shower and dripping onto Sehun’s face.

“Yes,” Junmyeon says. “And also you’re a jerk.”

“It’s too early for me to have been a jerk today. Did I out Baekhyun in my sleep again?” Baekhyun still hadn’t forgiven Sehun for the time he fell asleep on the sofa and yelled _”Baekhyun is gay!”_ for fifteen minutes until he’d awoken to Baekhyun trying to smother the life out of him with a couch cushion. Sehun still doesn’t know why Baekhyun got so angry-- It’s not like he can control what he says in his sleep.

“No,” Junmyeon says. “Wait, Baekhyun is gay?”

“Nooooo,” Sehun says, rolling over so the water from Junmyeon’s hair hits his back instead of his face. “Go away.”

“You have a haircut this morning,” Junmyeon says. “Get out of bed. Jerk.”

“Why am I a jerk again?” Sehun closes his eyes and tries to will himself back to sleep.

“You’d better apologize to Chanyeol today, Sehun. Orders from leader.”

“Why do I need to apologize to Chanyeol?” Sehun gives up on sleeping, and sits up in bed, letting his sheets pool around his waist as he finger-combs his hair out of his eyes. “It’s his fault I couldn’t get my math homework done. He spent the whole evening braying like a donkey in the living room, remember?”

Sehun decides not to mention that until recently, he would be sitting right next to Chanyeol, laughing almost as loud and egging him on. Ever since debut though, Sehun’s had to struggle to get his homework done in the snatches of time he’s had available, and watching Chanyeol have fun without him is not only a bitter pill to swallow, but more than a little distracting.

Junmyeon’s frown becomes a little more pronounced. His sad, I-expected-more-from-you face is too much to bear this early in the morning, so Sehun looks down at his lap instead. “You really hurt his feelings,” Junmyeon says.

“What?”

“Just apologize, Sehun,” Junmyeon says. “It would go a long way toward making Chanyeol feel better.”

“Fine,” Sehun mumbles, throwing his legs over the side of the bed, wincing as it only makes his headache worse. “Bye.”

He pulls a shirt and sweats on and shuffles drowsily out the door and into the hall. He rubs at his eyes, trying to clear the sleep, and promptly runs into a wall.

“Sorry,” the wall murmurs, and Sehun blinks up to see Chanyeol. In the mornings, Chanyeol always greets Sehun with a grin that’s far too bright to be tolerated before noon, but today, he isn’t meeting Sehun’s eyes.

“Watch where you’re going,” Sehun says. “I almost lost an eye.” Usually Chanyeol will shove him playfully.

Instead, Chanyeol just nods, whispers “sorry” again, and moves past Sehun, ducking into his own bedroom before Sehun even realizes he’s gone.

Junmyeon’s order to apologize suddenly makes a little more sense, but Sehun still doesn’t understand why Chanyeol’s upset. “He’ll get over it,” Sehun says to himself as he goes into the bathroom and turns the tap to cold. He splashes his face, hoping the chill of the water will alleviate his headache, and afterwards, he feels much more awake. Kyungsoo moves past him as he dries his face and walks blearily into the shower, and Sehun shuts the door behind himself just as the water turns on.

When he enters the kitchen, Baekhyun and Junmyeon are sitting at the kitchen table, but it takes a minute for Sehun to spot Jongin at their feet, asleep under his chair.

“Did you apologize to Chanyeol yet?” Junmyeon takes a sip of his water and then turns to Baekhyun. “By the way, when were you going to me that you’re gay?”

Baekhyun stares at Junmyeon for a moment, before launching himself across the table, hands reaching for Sehun’s neck. Sehun ducks, running into Jongin’s chair, and Jongin jerks awake with a yelp. “I will end you, maknae,” Baekhyun hisses, teeth bared.

“Oops,” Sehun says, moving to use Junmyeon as a human shield. Still snarling, Baekhyun drops back into his chair, arms crossed.

Junmyeon takes another sip of his water. “I guess you need to apologize to Chanyeol _and_ Baekhyun this morning.”

Jongin slithers up into his chair, hair wild, and scrubs at his face with both hands. “What have you done this time, asshole? Weren’t you bad enough last night?”

Sehun takes Junmyeon’s chopsticks out of his hand, eating a piece of egg out of Junmyeon’s bowl. “What exactly did I do last night?”

“You were just your usual charming self,” Baekhyun says saccharinely, hands white-knuckled around his bowl of rice.

“So other than crushing Chanyeol’s soul, absolutely nothing,” Jongin says, and Junmyeon lightly hits him on the shoulder. “What?”

“Crushing Chanyeol’s soul?” Sehun says. “Chanyeol never takes anything seriously. Jongin calls him ‘Poor Man’s Minho’ every day in rehearsal and he just laughs.” Sehun had tried to stop that name from sticking, out of some sense of bro-code, but Chanyeol had made it impossible to defend him when he slipped during their first rehearsal of History and fell forward, pantsing Kyungsoo and giving himself a bloody nose all in a matter of seconds. Sehun distinctly recalls pressing a bag of frozen corn to the bridge of Chanyeol’s nose that night, laughing at him while informing him of his hard-earned nickname. Chanyeol had simply smiled, showing every single one of his teeth, and declared that it was worth it, since now they all knew _”that Kyungsoo has the biggest dick in EXO-K”_. Sehun had dropped the bag of corn and slapped the back of Chanyeol’s head, Chanyeol letting his head fall toward Sehun pathetically as he moaned about being injured into the hollow between Sehun’s neck and shoulder, still grinning from ear to ear, swollen nose and all.

“But Jongin is not _you_ -”

Chanyeol sticks his head into the kitchen then, looking directly at Junmyeon. “Are you ready to go, hyung?” he asks, mouth still curled into a tiny frown.

“Wait, where are you going? It’s only seven.” He directs the question at Chanyeol, to prove to everyone that Chanyeol isn’t upset with him.

But Chanyeol looks down at his feet and swallows, hair falling over his forehead and obscuring his eyes. Junmyeon clears his throat and answers for him. “We’ve got that photo shoot for the subunit album cover today.”

Jongin snorts, and then covers his mouth quickly as everyone turns to look at him. “My bad,” Jongin says. “I’m just... still not over it.”

“For the last time, Jongin,” Junmyeon says primly, with all the forbearance of a man who takes his job very seriously, “there’s nothing funny about the EXTACY sub-unit project.”

“Of course not,” Jongin says, schooling his face into something almost neutral, that Sehun would totally buy if he didn’t have eyes. “I was just. Coughing.”

Junmyeon turns in his seat. “Oh no,” he says, suddenly worried. “Do you have a cold? Are you coming down with something?”

Now it’s Baekhyun who’s laughing, and Sehun tilts his head to share a conspiratorial grin with Chanyeol, but Chanyeol still isn’t looking at him. Sehun’s stomach hurts, now, too. Maybe he shouldn’t have eaten Junmyeon’s egg. Junmyeon’s perpetual anxiety is probably contagious.

Jongin successfully fends Junmyeon off by promising to drink herbal medicine before he leaves for rehearsal, and Junmyeon stands up and walks over to join Chanyeol at the door. “Don’t forget you have a haircut in thirty minutes, Sehun. Don’t keep the stylist waiting.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sehun says, waving Junmyeon off as he takes Junmyeon’s seat. “I got it.” He doesn’t look in that direction, because he thinks Chanyeol might be kind of avoiding him and he doesn’t really want to deal with that before food.

After Chanyeol and Junmyeon are gone, Kyungsoo wanders into the kitchen, wide-eyed and wet. “Did Junmyeon-hyung and Chanyeol already leave?”

“Long gone,” Baekhyun says, like they hadn’t left seconds ago. “I hope Chanyeol manages to paste a smile on his face for the shoot. If he doesn’t, Sulli might just out-cute him and he’d never forgive himself for that.”

Kyungsoo looks at Sehun and raises both eyebrows. “Wait, you still haven’t apologized to Chanyeol yet?”

Sehun sighs. “Well, _maybe_ if someone would tell me what I’m supposed to be so sorry about-”

The front door opens, and Hyeonkyun appears in the kitchen, brandishing a baseball cap and one of Sehun’s hooded sweatshirts. “Are you ready to go?” his manager asks, constant frown firmly in place. “I’ll bet you haven’t even brushed your teeth yet.”

Sehun would lie, but his breath smells kind of bad. He gives his manager a sullen look, and decides the Chanyeol situation can wait until lunch.

-

Rehearsal, after Sehun’s haircut, is a nightmare. Or, Sehun wishes it were a nightmare, because that would mean that A, he was still asleep, and B, he would wake up and his hair would not look like someone had closed their eyes and cut it with a weedwacker, and then followed that up by sprinkling a handful of raspberry jello powder on it while it was wet.

“You look like like you belong a kid’s show,” Jongin had said, and Sehun had looked at him incredulously, as if to remind Jongin that his own hair still looked like the 80s might call at any moment and ask for it back. “The one with the round aliens with televisions on their bellies.”

Baekhyun had snickered and run his hand luxuriously through his own dark, normal looking hair, rubbing it in that he didn’t look like an advertisement for Skittles, before looking down at his phone, which was blinking with a ‘new message’ notification. Kyungsoo had clapped a hand on his shoulder and said “it could totally have been worse,” which Jongin had followed up with “how?”

When they get in the elevator, heading up to the top floor where lunch is waiting for them, it stops three floors short of their destination, and the doors slide open to reveal Chanyeol and Junmyeon, still caked in make-up and smelling of BB Cream and overpriced hairspray.

Junmyeon’s jaw drops at the sight of Sehun. “Wow,” he says. “That’s a real... transformation.”

“I think the stylist was drunk,” Baekhyun says. “I’m not going to lie; I am sadistically enjoying the fruits of her trespasses.”

Sehun waits for Chanyeol’s customary seal-clapping and maybe a jibe or two, but he’s treated to nothing but a cursory nod, and Chanyeol sticks to the opposite side of the elevator, between Jongin and the wall. Jongin, instead of elbowing Chanyeol like he normally would, instead pokes him almost gently, which earns him a tiny smile from Chanyeol that quickly fades.

Sehun can remember another smile like that, like the time he’d found a tiny kitten that had fit perfectly into the palm of his large hand, back paws and tail slipping through his fingers, and their manager had told him solemnly that he couldn’t keep it. After the kitten had been carted off to a new home, or an animal shelter, or wherever their manager had taken it, Sehun had tugged on Chanyeol’s wrist and pulled him down into Sehun’s bed. Chanyeol hadn’t cried, because he doesn’t really do that, but he’d pressed his face into Sehun’s hair, and Sehun had let him.

Sehun grabs Chanyeol’s wrist just like that as they exit the elevator, letting the others walk ahead.

“Hey,” he says. “Whatever I said to you yesterday-”

“No, it’s fine,” Chanyeol says, biting down on his lower lip, “I know I can be really annoying sometimes.”

“What?” Sehun is so surprised that he releases Chanyeol’s wrist, and Chanyeol immediately slips his hands into the pockets of his oversized hoodie. He looks down the hallway, towards where the others are entering the cafeteria, and exhales.

“I mean, I can see how you’d get sick of me.” Chanyeol laughs, but it’s forced and hollow and it makes Sehun kind of queasy.

“Chanyeol,” Sehun says, the memory of last night suddenly stark in his mind, “I-”

“It’s fine,” Chanyeol says, and his smile is almost painful. “Don’t worry about it.” He steps past Sehun, and starts down the hall. Sehun opens his mouth, not sure what he’s going to say but thinking he should at least say something, but Chanyeol looks over his shoulder and offers Sehun a grin that’s a little more general. “By the way, I like your hair.” He shrugs. “I think you’d look good with any haircut.”

Sehun swallows as Chanyeol walks into the cafeteria, leaving him alone in the hallway feeling like he just keeps digging himself a deeper grave.

-

They’ve got an MNET interview scheduled for the afternoon. Sehun isn’t really in the mood for another Q&A where the host asks leading questions that hint at a romantic relationship between him and Lu Han, but a job is a job, and Sehun has his best blushes prepared. He’s got to do something to distract the viewers from his hair.

Junmyeon is his usual try-hard self, with Baekhyun egging him on and Jongin trying his best to not look stupid even though all the cards are stacked against him. Chanyeol, sitting on the end as usual, is only speaking when spoken to, Kyungsoo picking up the slack and amping up his own enthusiasm to cover Chanyeol’s uncustomary reticence.

“So EXO is finally coming back after last December’s full-length album,” the host, who keeps eyeing Sehun like he’s a particularly delicious pastry, says. “What is the concept of this new mini-album?”

Junmyeon shifts excitedly in his seat, and Baekhyun imitates him when he isn’t looking, which makes the cameramen laugh, and Jongin smirk. “Well, since we’re from EXOplanet, we’ve finally made a place for ourselves here on this planet, and we are blooming like new flowers with the spring.”

“Oh, is that the idea behind your maknae’s hair concept?” She bats her eyelashes at Sehun, and smiles.

Jongin stifles a laugh, but Baekhyun doesn’t bother, loudly chuckling before composing himself enough to give an answer. “Sehun’s hair concept is more...edgy than than the rest of ours.” He turns to look at Sehun, one dimple showing threateningly, and Sehun thinks maybe Baekhyun isn’t over the whole ‘outing him to Junmyeon’ thing, yet. “We gave our flower-boy the least flower-boy haircut.”

“I’m always so disappointed to be reminded that Sehun is the maknae. He looks so...” she trails off, looking more hungry than Sehun thinks is necessary. “Mature.”

“Thank you?” Sehun self consciously fixes his bangs, or what’s left of them on the right side of his forehead. He wonders if this is how Kibeom-hyung felt during Lucifer promotions.

“I’m sure Lu Han loves it,” she purrs, and Sehun flushes on command and demurely claims that Lu Han has yet to see it. Jongin is shaking with amusement, so Sehun not-so-subtly kicks him, which makes everyone turn in their direction, even Chanyeol. As soon as Chanyeol catches Sehun’s gaze, though, he looks back down again, at his knees, where his hands are resting, thumbs fiddling with the embroidered seams of his bedazzled patchwork denim trousers.

Chanyeol always toys with hems and stitching when he’s nervous. The day after they’d been told they were going to debut, Chanyeol had picked the seams right out of Sehun’s favorite quilt, until the stuffing had started to fluff out and fall to the floor in tufts. _“Cut that out,”_ Sehun had said, peeling Chanyeol’s fingers one by one off of the edge of the blanket, and held his hand loosely between his own two. _“Aren’t you supposed to be the hyung?”_ Sehun had said, and Chanyeol had hunched his shoulders in further. _“We’ll be fine.”_

“Chanyeol, you’re awfully quiet over there,” the host says, and Kyungsoo interjects quickly with a “he’s exhausted from practicing for our comeback,” which Chanyeol hurriedly nods along with, pasting a wan grin on his face.

“I’ve used up all my power on my rapping,” Chanyeol says, and the host nods, pursing her lips and turning back to Sehun.

“Have you been using up all _your_ power on rapping?” She wriggles her eyebrows, “or do you have a little bit left over for this interview.”

Sehun waits for Junmyeon to laugh and change the subject, maybe to Jongin’s dancing or Kyungsoo’s singing, or maybe even Baekhyun’s pranks in the dorm, but he doesn’t. He just leaves Sehun there to die.

Sehun flounders, and considers answers ranging from _“I’m a growing boy so I’m way too tired to deal with this shit,”_ to _“I’m sure Jongin would love to let you suck his dick,”_ to _“Baekhyun is gay,”_ but none them seem like answers that won’t get him slapped upside the head by someone after the interview is over, and he thinks that Lee Soo Man hits would probably hit really hard.

“Jongin has way more energy than Sehun does,” comes help from an unexpected source. Sehun turns to give Chanyeol a relieved and thankful look, but Chanyeol’s eyes are fixed firmly on the host, who seems a bit put out to be distracted from her game. “It’s him you should be asking about ‘extra energy’.”

It’s been awhile since Sehun’s seen Chanyeol’s fake smile. He hasn’t missed it.

Baekhyun claps excitedly. “We’re lucky if we even get minimum energy from our lazy maknae,” he says.

“I’m not the one who was asleep under the table this morning,” Sehun rebuts, and Jongin pokes him in the ribs while Kyungsoo leans around Sehun to look at Jongin skeptically.

“Again, Jongin? This is why your back won’t get better.”

“It’s like having a particularly unpleasant pet,” Baekhyun says. “One that eats more than regular pets, and adds less to your happiness.”

Chanyeol lets Baekhyun take control from there, and things move forward more smoothly. For the rest of the interview, Sehun tries to catch Chanyeol’s eyes, but Chanyeol, for once, won’t look at him at all.

“Why haven’t you apologized yet?” Kyungsoo asks, as they shuffle from the interview room into the hallway. “This is depressing.”

“I tried but he wouldn’t _let me_ ,” Sehun says. “He just made that same face he makes when Jongin eats all the apple flavored candies out of the HI-CHEW box just to spite him.”

“Ouch,” Kyungsoo says. “That’s a bad one.”

“Yeah,” Sehun says. “Then he basically told me that he knows he’s annoying and that he’s going to try to work on it, or something dumb like that. I couldn’t get a word in.”

Kyungsoo frowns, and then looks at Sehun seriously. “But of course, that’s not what you really want, is it?”

Sehun shrugs non-committally. “I dunno,” Sehun says. “Maybe I’d get my math homework done.”

“Do you really want Chanyeol to try to change, though? If not, you’d better apologize.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Sehun says, and he tries not to think about the way his stomach had dropped at the thought of a Chanyeol who didn’t make too much noise.

-

Chanyeol spends the free time before dinner locked in his room, taking a nap. Sehun knocks on the door three times, and calls Chanyeol’s name through the crack, loud enough to be heard but quiet enough not to disturb him if he’s sleeping. Chanyeol doesn’t answer, but Sehun thinks he hears him moving around inside. That makes him feel worse than when he’d tried to apologize before lunch.

Sehun has been friends with Chanyeol since Chanyeol joined the company, almost five years ago now, and in between school and headlocks and playful fights, they’ve never really argued about anything serious. Sehun has said worse things to Chanyeol in the past and Chanyeol has always laughed them off. He can’t figure out why this time, Chanyeol is acting like Sehun has purposefully crushed all his dreams and then eaten them spread on toast for breakfast.

He ends up dragging his homework out to the kitchen table, opening his textbook to a dog-eared page and clicking new lead out the tip of his mechanical pencil. But as he looks at the complicated problems, he still can’t seem to summon any focus, even though the dorm is completely quiet.

Dinner is a repeat of lunch, with missed glances and Sehun feeling simultaneously ignored and like the worst person on the planet, and by the time he goes to bed, his homework remains incomplete and the weight of his unsaid apology is heavy on his shoulders. As he closes his eyes, he can feel the beginnings of another headache.

#

**2**

Sehun wakes up with the same pounding headache he went to sleep with, Junmyeon hovering over him with a disappointed frown on his face.

“Am I late?” Sehun mumbles groggily, because Junmyeon is already dressed, hair wet from the shower and dripping onto Sehun’s face.

“Yes,” Junmyeon says. “And also you’re a jerk.”

“Wait, I’m still a jerk? I tried to apologize. Is Baekhyun still mad about me telling you he’s gay?”

“Baekhyun is gay?” Junmyeon asks, sounding thoroughly shocked. “What?”

Junmyeon’s hair is raining water on his face. This is a terrible new habit he’s developing.

Sehun rolls over onto his belly. “Nevermind,” he says, reaching a hand up to push his bangs back from his face. He gets his fingers tangled in his fringe, and then, he stops. “But-”

“You’d better apologize to Chanyeol,” Junmyeon says, and Sehun ignores him, sitting up in bed faster than he’s moved in literally years, touching his hair all over.

“Oh my god, hyung, I had the worst nightmare.” He fingers the hair by his ears reverently, never having felt so thankful for the awful gray mess he has right now. “My hair was pink. I think I’ve found enlightenment.”

“Sehun, are you even listening to me? I am trying to have a serious conversation with you about your lack of social skills.”

“Yeah, but, in the dream, I got this _terrible_ haircut! Jongin said I looked like a Teletubby. The worst thing was, he was right.”

“Sehun, calm down, you don’t have your hair appointment until after breakfast. And for all of our sakes, I hope they don’t make it pink.” Junmyeon sighs, pulling the collar of his button down out over his sweatshirt, which makes him look like a total tool. “And don’t forget to apologize to Chanyeol.”

“Wait, in my dream, Chanyeol wouldn’t _let_ me apologize, which means I shouldn’t even bother,” Sehun says, but he’s been talking to the closed door, Junmyeon having somehow managed to leave without Sehun noticing.

Grabbing a random shirt from the pile at the foot of his bed, Sehun gets dressed and walks out into the hallway. He’s scrubbing at his eyes with a fist when something solid bumps into his side. That something mumbles a “sorry” and Sehun glares up at Chanyeol’s face.

“Watch where you’re going,” Sehun says, and Chanyeol won’t look at him, just like in his dream. “I almost lost an eye.” Sehun is so distracted by how much this feels like deja vu that he only sort of notices the way Chanyeol’s face falls at his words.

Walking past him, Chanyeol whispers another “sorry”, and disappears behind the door of his bedroom, leaving Sehun standing in the hallway, feeling strange and disoriented.

In the bathroom, he splashes his face with cold water, because somehow, he still has a headache and it thrums annoyingly behind his eyes even worse than it had the night before. He looks into the mirror, frowns at the redness of his eyes, and shakes his head to clear it. “It was just a stupid dream,” he says to himself, and then splashes his face again for good measure. Kyungsoo moves past him as he dries his face and walks blearily into the shower, and Sehun shuts the door behind himself just as the water turns on.

Baekhyun and Junmyeon are sitting at the kitchen table and Sehun, almost in disbelief, looks underneath the table for Jongin. “This is so fucking weird,” Sehun says, when he spots him, snoring underneath his chair.

Baekhyun looks up. “What’s weird?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Sehun says, sauntering further into the kitchen.

“Did you apologize to Chanyeol yet?” Junmyeon asks, setting down his glass of water on the table. He turns to look at Baekhyun. “By the way, when were you going to me that you’re gay?”

Baekhyun stares at Junmyeon for a moment, before launching himself across the table, hands reaching for Sehun’s neck. Sehun ducks, but he’s not fast enough to dodge Baekhyun’s fingers, and they clutch at the fabric of Sehun’s tee and drag him closer, until his hips are digging into the edge of the table. “I will end you, maknae,” Baekhyun hisses, teeth bared. Sehun’s surprised grunt wakes Jongin, who bangs his head on the chair leg, before squirming up and into his seat.

Jongin rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. “What have you done this time, asshole? Weren’t you bad enough last night?”

Sehun tries to answer, but the neck of his tee is cutting off his windpipe as Baekhyun slowly strangles him.

“No killing band members on interview days,” Junmyeon says. “That’s not giving the SM spin machine quite long enough to make up a plausible story about their deaths.” Then he picks up the last piece of egg in his bowl and shoves it into his mouth, making no move to enforce his order.

Sehun’s vision is going white around the edges when Baekhyun finally lets go, letting him pull backward and gently massage his neck. “Barbarian,” Sehun says, grimacing in distaste in Baekhyun’s direction, and Baekhyun seems to barely restrain himself from lunging again. The slight forward motion is enough to make Sehun shriek and jump backward, out of Baekhyun’s reach.

Chanyeol sticks his head into the kitchen, and Sehun is almost expecting the way Chanyeol looks directly at Junmyeon, completely avoiding eye-contact. “Are you ready to go, hyung?” he asks, mouth curled into a tiny frown.

“Wait, where are you going? It’s only seven,” Sehun asks, and it echoes in his head, eerily enough that he reaches his hands up to cover his ears. “ _So_ weird.”

“You keep saying that, but I think you’re equally as weird as you usually are,” Baekhyun says, looking up at Chanyeol with a conspiratorial smile. Chanyeol doesn’t laugh, and Sehun, as he did in the dream, starts feeling a little bit queasy. “Which means super weird,” Baekhyun finishes, but his heart isn’t in it. An awkward silence descends on the kitchen.

It’s just that Sehun’s never really seen Chanyeol like this. He’s always been able to count on Chanyeol’s smile, and the absence of it leaves him feeling empty. Sehun’s trainee-period was filled with instances of Chanyeol picking him up from exhaustion and defeat with a well-timed grin, single dimple serving as a constant reminder that Sehun wasn’t alone. Chanyeol’s face, without that smile, looks wrong, and Sehun finds it strange how lonely it makes him feel.

“We’ve got that photo shoot for the subunit album cover today,” Junmyeon says, falsely cheerful. He’s glaring daggers at Sehun as he speaks, urging him to apologize with the disapproving downturn of his mouth, but Sehun is still too caught up in how creepily similar it all is to open his mouth.

“Wow, hyung, you guys had better hurry up. Wouldn’t want the staff to have to wait any longer than necessary for your orgasm faces.”

“Jongin, just because the subgroup is called EXTACY doesn’t mean all the songs are about sex.”

“Then it’s a waste of a good name,” Jongin replies, and he high-fives Baekhyun before slumping back down into his chair under Junmyeon’s unamused stare.

“It’s about the spreading the pure joy of experiencing our voices together,” Junmyeon says primly, and Baekhyun snorts water out through his nose.

“Hyung, at one point in the single, Krystal moans for a solid minute and a half, and Chanyeol starts in with the low grunting noises about thirty seconds into that.”

“That’s not remotely suggestive,” Jongin says. “I don’t know why anyone would get the wrong idea.”

“They’re experiencing _pure joy_.” His voice is emphatic, and verging on panicked. He takes a moment to collect himself, and Sehun thinks he might hear him whispering some kind of mantra under his breath.

“I think you broke him,” Sehun says, and Baekhyun and Jongin high-five again, like it was their plan all along. But Chanyeol is still totally and stubbornly silent, and it’s like a black hole coming from the entrance of the kitchen, sucking all the room’s mirth inside of it and making it disappear.

Junmyeon rises from his chair, dropping his chopsticks onto his napkin and straightening the offensive collar of his button down. “Don’t forget you have a haircut in thirty minutes, Sehun. Don’t keep the stylist waiting.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sehun says faintly, sinking into Junmyeon’s seat. “I got it.” Sehun tries to use his brain to _will_ Chanyeol into looking at him, just to prove things are different than they’d been in his head, while he was sleeping, but it doesn’t work. Chanyeol’s shoulders are slumped, and the nausea climbing up Sehun’s throat threatens to choke him.

After Chanyeol and Junmyeon are gone, Kyungsoo wanders into the kitchen, wide-eyed and wet. “Did Junmyeon-hyung and Chanyeol already leave?”

“Just left,” Baekhyun says. “Chanyeol, of course, looks like someone stabbed a puppy and left it on his pillow, and Junmyeon nearly had another aneurism about EXTACY.”

“That subgroup really is a shame,” Kyungsoo says, always sympathetic to Junmyeon’s plights. “Why is Chanyeol... wait, you still haven’t apologized to Chanyeol?”

Sehun sighs. “I’m not awake enough for this shit,” he says. “I feel like this is some hidden camera show.”

“What are you talking about?” Baekhyun asks him. “Did you inhale too much glitter hairspray yesterday?”

“No, his eyes are always hooded like that,” Jongin says. “And everything he says is always stupid.”

“Pot, kettle, black,” Sehun says, forcing himself to take a huge bite of Junmyeon’s leftover breakfast.

The front door opens, and Hyeonkyun appears in the kitchen, a baseball cap and one of Sehun’s hooded sweatshirts in hand. “Are you ready to go?” his manager asks, constant frown firmly in place. “I’ll bet you haven’t even brushed your teeth yet.”

Sehun runs his tongue over his teeth, feeling the film that still lies there, and swallows. It’s like he’s seeing his life on playback, and this is easily the weirdest morning he’s experienced in a very long time.

At least, he thinks, his hair isn’t pink.

-

Sehun watches in disgusted disbelief as the stylist turns on the buzz shaver and lifts up all the hair on the left side of his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he says, and then winces as the hair hits the ground.

“Hush,” she says, “you’re going to look fabulous.”

“I bet that’s what you told Changmin-seonbaenim before TVXQ’s last comeback,” Sehun mutters beneath his breath, and wishes he were just getting a terrible bowlcut. “This is inhumane.”

“Don’t worry!” She hacks off a chunk of his fringe. “The new color will bring out some of the pink in those cheeks!”

Sehun glares at her reflection in the mirror, and when she approaches him with the little bowl of dye, he has to force himself not to make a break for it.

-

“I know, I know,” Sehun says, as Jongin opens his mouth when Sehun comes into rehearsal later that morning, “I look like a Teletubby.”

Jongin looks disappointed.

-

When the elevator stops to pick up Junmyeon and Chanyeol, three floors short of the lunch room, Sehun isn’t even surprised.

“Wow,” Junmyeon says. “That’s a real... transformation.”

“I think the stylist was drunk,” Baekhyun says. “I’m not going to lie; I am sadistically enjoying the fruits of her trespasses.”

Sehun turns to Chanyeol, arms crossed. “Stop ignoring me.”

Chanyeol’s eyes go wide. “I’m not ignoring you.” His voice is low and careful.

“Then why are you acting so... un-Chanyeol?”

The elevator doors open and the rest of the members file out, Baekhyun looking over his shoulder at Chanyeol worriedly.

Chanyeol tries to catch up with the others, but Sehun, without even thinking, grabs at Chanyeol’s wrist to stop him.

Sehun’s not sure what’s going on, but if everything is the same as it had unfolded in his head last night, he knows why Chanyeol is upset.

“Hey,” he says. “Sometimes, yeah, you are kind of annoying, but sometimes people find their friends annoying, and it’s not like you hold them to the same standards as someone you want to date, right?”

Chanyeol doesn’t look as happy with his apology as Sehun thinks he should. Instead, Chanyeol looks kind of upset. Chanyeol opens and closes his mouth twice, before he gives Sehun a wounded look and gives up.

It’s the look Chanyeol saves for losing his high school girlfriend to a boy who has more time for her, or for late night calls from his older sister when she misses him and wants to hear his voice. It’s the look Sehun soothes away by tossing Chanyeol the other video game controller and pushing into his personal space, bumping their knees together as he challenges Chanyeol to best out of three.

That Sehun has _caused_ that look means Chanyeol probably doesn’t want to race Sehun in Mario Kart, and it’s got Sehun’s stomach twisting around itself in a mix of confusion and frustration.

It’s not like Sehun has even done anything particularly bad. He’s known for being somewhat of a brat, and Chanyeol has been on the receiving end of his temper more than once. Now, he’s trying to apologize, but instead of fixing things, it only seems to make them worse.

Sehun awkwardly shifts his weight and wonders what exactly he’s said wrong. He backpedals. “Not that-- I mean, not that you aren’t... I’m sure you’ll find someone whose standards are different than mine.”

“Thanks,” Chanyeol says, running a hand through his hair, pushing it back to reveal his forehead. “I guess.” His mouth is still in an unhappy pout, and Sehun is frustrated. Chanyeol turns, leaving Sehun staring at his back. “Let’s get lunch.”

Chanyeol starts to walk away, leaving a bewildered Sehun watching his back, and it’s not until Chanyeol reaches the door to the cafeteria that Sehun realizes what is different.

“Wait,” Sehun says, and Chanyeol pauses. “What do you think of my hair?”

Chanyeol sucks his lower lip into his mouth, and pushes his hands deeper into the pockets of his oversized hoodie. “I think...” Chanyeol says, and he’s got his eyes trained on the ground, “I think you’d look good with any haircut.” It’s weird, but Sehun feels a fluttering in his chest, and a warmth that stretches out along the inside of his ribs. The feeling is almost as comforting as one of Chanyeol’s hugs, even if Sehun’s been pretending he’s too old for those, lately.

Sehun swallows as Chanyeol walks into the cafeteria, leaving him alone in the hallway feeling like he’s just failed a test that he thought he’d know all the answers to.

-

When the stylist shoves his outfit for the MNET interview that afternoon, Sehun grimaces as he holds up the paisley and rhinestone studded harem capris he remembers from his dream.

“I guess even the darkest depths of my imagination, I couldn’t have made these up,” he mutters. “I should have known these existed somewhere in the basement of SM.”

Baekhyun cackles from across the dressing room, putting on his own sedate, white stretch jeans, with only mildly blinding rhinestone flowers sparkling from the pockets. “Sehun, please, you know that it could have been worse.”

Sehun glares. “ _How?_ ”

Baekhyun points at Jongin’s daisy-patterned jumpsuit in lieu of an answer. Jongin is hopping around on one foot, attempting to lace up his gladiator sandals, while Kyungsoo tells him unsympathetically that he should have gotten a pedicure.

During the interview, when the creepy host asks about his power rapping, Sehun blithely informs her that no, he just stayed up all night talking to Lu Han on Skype. The host immediately pounces on the opportunity to talk about Sehun’s relationship with Lu Han, ignoring the other members in favor of going in for the kill.

Afterwards, Jongin teases him about his imaginary Skype call, and Chanyeol, as Sehun has come to expect, is infuriatingly quiet.

-

Sehun’s not sure if what he’s more irritated with is Chanyeol, or himself, that he doesn’t understand why Chanyeol is upset. He ends up glaring at his still unfinished math homework for the entirety of their free time, only pausing when Jongin starts turning all the zeros in his textbook into obscene drawings.

“So have you apologized yet?” Jongin asks, as he turns a theta into an anime girl’s left breast.

Sehun stabs the back of Jongin’s hand with his mechanical pencil, and growls “why does everyone keep asking me that?” as Jongin whimpers and rubs at the wound.

“Because you’re a dick,” Jongin replies. “Besides, you know how much your opinion matters to Chanyeol.”

“What?” Sehun asks, but Jongin is long gone from the conversation, buried waist deep in their freezer as he searches for ice cream sandwiches.

-

When Sehun pulls the covers over his head, he wonders how his day managed to turn out even worse than he’d dreamed.

#

**3**

Sehun wakes up with the same pounding headache he went to sleep with, Junmyeon hovering over him with a disappointed frown on his his face.

“Am I late?” Sehun is starting to feel like a broken record.

“Yes,” Junmyeon says. “And also you’re a jerk.”

The water from Junmyeon’s hair is dripping into his eyes this time and the remnants of conditioner burn. Sehun grabs at his full head of hair and groans. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Junmyeon’s frown deepens. “Language, maknae.” Junmyeon’s hands are on his hips now, and he looks a little like an offended rooster, wet hair in an accidental fauxhawk. “You’ll never get Chanyeol to forgive you with that attitude.”

“No, no, no, no,” Sehun says, and rolls over, attempting to smother himself in his pillow. “Just no.”

“Get up, Sehun, you’ve got a haircut in thirty minutes.”

“I _refuse_ to get my hair cut,” Sehun announces into his pillowcase, and Junmyeon swats at his backside.

“But you have to. Your contract says the stylists can tie you to the chair if they need to.”

“I don’t want to spend my life as a raspberry!” Sehun wails, but Junmyeon is already gone. “Why is this happening to me?”

Sehun decides not to move until Hyeonkyun sticks his head in a half an hour later, grabs him by the ankle, and drags him out of bed. “You’re late,” he says, and throws a shirt at Sehun’s face as Sehun rubs a now-bruised elbow.

“Hey,” Sehun says, “it’s impossible to be late for something you’ve already done.”

Hyeonkyun scowls, deeply unimpressed. “Kids these days,” he says, and then picks up yesterday’s socks and throws those too, for good measure.

“Those are Junmyeon’s!” Sehun squawks, crinkling his nose, but Hyeonkyun’s left already, too, and Sehun feels like he’s been carrying on conversations with more backs than faces. “This is not a dream,” Sehun says, hands coming up to touch his hair incredulously one more time, just to make sure. “Is it?”

-

When Sehun gets to rehearsal, this time he lets Jongin crack all the jokes he wants because he’s used up all his fight with the hair stylist.

He must look too pitiful for Baekhyun to make fun of, because instead Baekhyun says, “You missed Chanyeol this morning.”

Kyungsoo’s eyes go wide. “You still haven’t apologized?”

“ _No_ ,” Sehun says. “It’s kind of hard to do that when you’re trying not to smash your head repeatedly into a wall.”

“Don’t do that,” Jongin says sweetly. “You’ll mess up your bangs.”

“I hate all of you,” Sehun announces, and then turns to Jongin. “But I hate you the most.”

Baekhyun seems personally offended, like he’s lost some kind of popularity contest, and so he dedicates the rest of the rehearsal to asking pointed questions about the status of Sehun’s virginity.

By the time they get in the elevator, Sehun is almost glad to see Chanyeol’s sad face, because at least it’s not Baekhyun’s demonic one.

Almost, because a sad Chanyeol just reminds Sehun that he still hasn’t figured out why Chanyeol is so upset. Sehun thinks it’s a shame that it’s the third time he’s going through this day and he still has no idea how to put the stupid smile back on Chanyeol’s face.

This time, when he grabs Chanyeol’s wrist, he says, “You’re not that annoying. If I was a girl, I might even date you.”

Chanyeol shakes his wrist free from Sehun’s grip. “We’re not on camera. You don’t have to make jokes like that. It’s weird.” Chanyeol’s face is caught in a weird expression; something between discomfort and sadness. It makes Sehun’s chest feel sort of tight, inexplicably.

“No, but I’m not-” _joking_ , is what Sehun is going to say, but Chanyeol has already turned away, and Sehun can’t see his face anymore but he’s still trying to puzzle out what Chanyeol’s expression had meant.

One time, Sehun had asked Chanyeol for advice about how to win over a girl. They’d been lying on the floor in Chanyeol’s shared room with Wu Fan, and Sehun’d had his toes pressed against Chanyeol’s ankle, occasionally running the inside of his foot up Chanyeol’s calf because he knew Chanyeol was ticklish there. _“But how do you know if a girl likes you?”_ Sehun had asked, and Chanyeol’s eyes had been fixed on the ceiling. Sehun hadn’t thought the uneven paint job was all that interesting, but Chanyeol hadn’t turned to look at him, even when he had huffed and dug his toes into the back of Chanyeol’s knee. _”It’s obvious when someone likes you,”_ Chanyeol had eventually replied, dark hair curling slightly in the humidity of the room. _”Anyway, what do I know about girls? I just get dumped by them.” “One girl,”_ Sehun had corrected, and Chanyeol’s face, then, had been set in the same pensive lines that Sehun had seen just a moment ago.

He watches Chanyeol walk away from him, for the third time, clenching his hands into fists and feeling more than a little lost.

“By the way,” Chanyeol says, pausing at the doorway to look back at Sehun, not into Sehun’s eyes but past him, “I like your hair. It’s different, but it looks... good.”

“Thanks,” Sehun says, but he doesn’t think Chanyeol hears him over the sound of Baekhyun’s laughter coming from cafeteria.

-

“So EXO is finally coming back after last December’s full-length album. What is the concept of this new mini-album?”

Sehun barely registers Junmyeon’s answer, still turning the idea he’d gotten during lunch over in his mind. He’s jerked out of his thoughts when the host leans forward to ask him a question directly.

“And what does Lu Han think of your haircut?” she asks, implying the usual innuendo with her tone, and Sehun licks his lips.

“He hasn’t seen it yet,” Sehun says demurely, “but it doesn’t matter since Chanyeol-hyung has assured me that he likes it.” Sehun doesn’t look in Chanyeol’s direction, and he doesn’t really have to force the flush that creeps up into his cheeks.

“Oh, I didn’t know you and Chanyeol were close,” the host says, and she looks like a shark that has found blood in the water.

“We are,” Sehun says, still looking only at the host, but feeling everyone’s eyes on him. “We’ve been good friends since our trainee days.”

“Chanyeol, you’re awfully quiet over there,” the host says, and Sehun chances a look in Chanyeol’s direction, only to find that Chanyeol is staring down at his too-big feet, hair hanging into his face.

“He’s exhausted from preparing for our comeback,” Kyungsoo says, and he _glares_ at Sehun.

“I’ve used up all my power on my rapping.” Chanyeol’s deep voice is softer than usual, and Sehun had thought for sure this would work, but Baekhyun’s glaring at him too, so clearly he’s still doing something wrong.

After the interview, Kyungsoo grabs the back of his tie-dyed and ruffled bolero jacket, the rhinestones making it easier to grip. “I didn’t think you were that big of a jerk,” Kyungsoo says, and Sehun blinks at him, confused.

“What are you talking about?”

“Just because you don’t feel the same way, doesn’t mean you have to rub it in.” Kyungsoo’s eyebrows are drawn together in anger, and Sehun tries to process but the solutions he’s coming up with seem even less right than Junmyeon’s attempts at his calculus homework.

“Rub... what... in...?” Sehun asks, and on instinct, he turns towards where the others are heading back into the dressing room, and catches Chanyeol staring at him. Chanyeol is biting down on his lower lip, and his eyes, Sehun thinks, look a little shiny. “You don’t mean-”

Kyungsoo pauses, and then tilts his head slightly to the left, like Sehun has spoken in another language. “Are you serious?”

Sehun tries to respond, but his jaw is hanging too low to form words. “I...” Sehun’s heart is beating too fast. It’s uncomfortable. “I didn’t...” Sehun’s never considered it. Chanyeol is the guy who had rested his hand on Sehun’s back and pretended not to see him cry when he’d gotten tired and homesick during preparation for debut. The guy who’d bailed him out when he’d accidentally hit on a girl who already had a _very_ possessive boyfriend. The guy who helped Sehun steal all of Jongin’s underwear and put them in the dryer until they shrunk small enough to crush Jongin’s balls. Chanyeol isn’t supposed to _like_ Sehun; not like this.

Then the manager is corralling them into the changing room, and Sehun is left with more questions than answers.

-

Sehun runs into the dorm and plasters himself to Chanyeol’s bedroom door so Chanyeol has no choice but to face him.

“We’re getting bubble tea,” he tells Chanyeol before he can ask questions. “You’re older, so you’re buying.”

Chanyeol stares at him for a moment, looking torn, before he shrugs and follows him out of the dorm, down the street to the local bubble tea shop.

After placing their orders, Sehun picks a table, watching Chanyeol fold himself into the tiny cafe chair.

Sehun can’t imagine his daily life without Chanyeol’s friendship. It doesn’t matter if Chanyeol likes him, as long as he never treats Sehun the way that he did today, which had left Sehun feeling cold and kinda lonely.

Chanyeol studies the tabletop until their drinks come, and Sehun decides to break the silence.

“Just so you know,” he says, “it’s totally cool that you want to suck my dick. It doesn’t have to change things between us.”

Chanyeol jumps, knocking his tea into Sehun’s lap, and instead of grabbing Sehun napkins to clean up, Chanyeol just stares at him, mouth open in shock.

“Sorry, s-sorry,” Chanyeol stutters, scraping back his chair. “I’m... gonna go.”

Sehun watches Chanyeol go, wet sweatpants sticking to his thighs, and sighs.

His pants are still wet when he makes it back to the dorm, and Baekhyun greets him with a kick to the crotch. “How are you such an idiot?” Baekhyun says, standing over him as he cries on the ground, cupping himself through his sweatpants. “I hope you never have children.”

He walks away, and Sehun spots Jongin watching from the couch, a bowl of popcorn between his knees. “Ouch,” he says, shoving a handful of popcorn into his mouth.

-

Chanyeol doesn’t come out of his room for dinner, and Sehun doesn’t finish his calculus homework, and he thinks the two might be connected.

#

**4**  
  
Sehun wakes up with the same pounding headache he went to sleep with, Junmyeon hovering over him with a disappointed frown on his face.  
  
“Oh fuck,” Sehun says, and promptly wills himself back to sleep, ignoring Junmyeon, who repeatedly attempts to shake him awake.  
  
-  
  
His first sighting of Chanyeol this time is in the elevator as they head up to lunch, and now the way Chanyeol avoids his eyes holds more meaning than it did before.  
  
Instead of stopping Chanyeol on his way out of the elevator, Sehun manages to snag the seat next to him in the cafeteria, and Chanyeol flinches when their thighs brush.  
  
It’s amazing, Sehun thinks, that now that he’s looking for it, he can see the blush in Chanyeol’s cheeks. It’s also amazing that Sehun is sort of flushing in response, because Sehun’s not really the flushing type. Maybe it’s because Sehun knows Chanyeol likes him, and Sehun’s never really been liked by a friend-- girls at his high school have had crushes on him before, but this feels different. Sehun _knows_ Chanyeol better than he knows almost anyone else, because they’ve lived in each other’s pockets for over four years, and Chanyeol has seen Sehun when Sehun wakes up in the morning, sleep crusted in his eyes and drool dried on the side of his mouth, and he’s seen the way Sehun looks when he’s tired, and when he’s angry, and when he’s sad. He’s seen Sehun at his very worst. Sehun’s seen Chanyeol like that, too. They’re friends. Things between them should never be this hard.  
  
Chanyeol picks at his food, unresponsive to Sehun’s attempts at conversation, and as soon as he’s deemed himself finished, he hurriedly goes to the garbage, throwing out his extra food and stacking his tray with the others. Sehun watches him go with narrowed eyes.  
  
Junmyeon leans across the table and pats Sehun’s hand comfortingly. “He might talk to you more if you apologized.”  
  
Baekhyun’s head snaps around from where he’s been talking with Jongin. “Wait, you haven’t apologized yet?”  
  
Sehun smacks his head on the table. It doesn’t help his headache.  
  
-  
  
Sehun grunts his way through the interview, which earns him chiding looks from Junmyeon and makes him an easy target for Baekhyun, who tells the creepy host all about the time that Sehun accidentally put on a pair of Taeyeon’s shorts instead of his own during a quick-change during SMTown. The host looks unnecessarily turned on by the idea, which spurs Baekhyun into talking about shared baths he’s had with a Sehun who enjoys lady’s bath products. Baekhyun has always enjoyed milking a crowd.  
  
Sehun would be embarrassed if it weren’t for the fact that he’s planning his next attack on Chanyeol, whose glum countenance has been Sehun’s constant companion for the past four days, or rather, the last day, four times.  
  
He once again ambushes Chanyeol outside of his bedroom door, dragging him to the bubble tea shop and ordering for them both before Chanyeol can even open his mouth.  
  
“How did you-” Chanyeol asks, but Sehun waves him off.  
  
“That’s not important,” Sehun says. “What _is_ important is that we need to talk. About things.”  
  
“What things?” Chanyeol looks down at his hands, fiddling and twisting the ring he’s wearing on his thumb as Sehun struggles to choose his words. “I thought you were sick of me talking.”  
  
“No,” Sehun says. “I mean, yes, but no. I was, you know, tired, and I... This is not what I want to talk about.”  
  
“What _do_ you want to talk about, then?” Chanyeol asks, as their drinks arrive. Chanyeol stabs his straw through the plastic lid, and Sehun follows suit. Chanyeol takes a sip, and Sehun considers.  
  
“You. And like. Feelings. Your feelings.” Sehun wraps his lips around the large straw and sucks, and Chanyeol quickly turns away and swallows.  
  
“About what? Bubble tea?” Chanyeol’s eyes are wary.  
  
“No,” Sehun says, shifting in his seat. His knee touches Chanyeol’s, and this is kind of embarrassing. “I mean, your _feelings._ For me.” He says it carelessly, like it’s _no big deal_ that Chanyeol wants to bone him, or that Sehun has no idea what he thinks about the fact that Chanyeol wants to bone him, but he realizes he might be giving off the wrong vibe when Chanyeol looks up at him, stricken.  
  
Sehun heaves a resigned sigh as Chanyeol drops his tea in Sehun’s lap, drenching his sweatpants and the rest spilling onto the floor. “I’m... gonna go,” Chanyeol says, and he’s hurrying out of the shop, leaving Sehun staring at his back, _again._  
  
“He could have at least given me a napkin,” Sehun mutters, and pouts.  
  
Baekhyun is waiting for him at the door, and Sehun covers his crotch on reflex. “It’s not my fault!” he says, before Baekhyun even has a chance to open his mouth, and Baekhyun just looks back at him disdainfully as Jongin yells “yes it is!” from his usual spot on the sofa.  
  
“You’re completely incapable of tact, aren’t you?” Baekhyun says, and Sehun thinks he’s improved vastly from the last time he’d had that conversation with Chanyeol, but he can’t exactly tell Baekhyun that.  
  
Sehun’s trying so hard to wrap his head around all this new information, but he’s stuck on the fact that this is _Chanyeol_ , and if Sehun were sentimental, he’d say that Chanyeol is one of the most important people in his life.  
  
“I’m trying, okay?” Sehun says. “I don’t know how to deal with all this ‘feelings’ stuff. I’m more into emotional minimalism.”  
  
“You just made that up,” Jongin says, while Baekhyun mutters “you’re just lucky I’m not into dick minimalism,” under his breath.  
  
Sehun doesn’t bother to do his calculus homework, opting instead to knock repeatedly on Chanyeol’s door for fifteen minutes until Chanyeol finally gives up and opens it.  
  
“I don’t know what to do. I just want to be friends with you,” Sehun says, because it’s been four days and he misses Chanyeol’s smile.  
  
“That’s the problem,” Chanyeol replies, and there’s not much that Sehun can say to that.  
  
Dinner is so quiet that Sehun feels like everyone must be able to hear his thoughts, which are echoing as loudly in his head as Chanyeol’s laughter used to.  
  
Chanyeol stays in his room the rest of the evening and Sehun gets into bed, pulling the sheets over his head and wishing he wouldn’t wake up again.  
  
#  
  
 **5**  
  
Sehun wakes up with the same pounding headache he went to sleep with, but the space above him is free of Junmyeon’s head.  
  
A glance at his phone shows the time to be five-thirty in the morning and even if a quick swipe at his bangs tells Sehun it’s technically the same day, he feels like he hasn’t showered in a week. Quietly creeping out the room so he doesn’t wake Junmyeon, Sehun steps into the shower. He glares at his own pink bottle of shampoo, remembering Baekhyun’s words during the interview, and spitefully reaches for Baekhyun’s bottle instead, squirting a generous dollop into his palm.  
  
The shower has him feeling more awake than usual, so by the time Sehun is wiping himself down with a towel, he has an idea.  
  
Wrapping the towel around his waist, Sehun charges down the hall and into the kitchen. Baekhyun is already there, sipping on his morning hot toddy, as Junmyeon cracks an egg over his rice.  
  
“Sehun, you know I have to leave early today,” Junmyeon says. “So why’d you take the shower?”  
  
Ignoring him, Sehun cuts to the chase. “Baekhyun, you’re gay. What should I do about Chanyeol?”  
  
“Wait, you’re gay?” Junmyeon asks, while Baekhyun sputters and stands up from his chair, accidentally kicking Jongin, who is already under the table, and waking him from his slumber.  
  
“You’re going to die, maknae,” Baekhyun hisses. “When I’m finished with you, the police will find your naked corpse on the kitchen floor.” Baekhyun stills. “You know about Chanyeol?”  
  
Jongin hoists himself back up into his chair. “I didn’t think Sehun knew about anything.”  
  
“Jongin, I know everything,” Sehun says, kicking Jongin’s shin. “So what am I supposed to do?”  
  
He looks at Baekhyun expectantly, because Baekhyun still owes him for not telling anyone about when he’d caught Baekhyun on his knees giving Kyuhyun a blowjob during SMTown Paris last year.  
  
“You could try not being a total bastard,” Baekhyun says through clenched teeth.  
  
“That could be kind of hard for him,” Jongin says, and Sehun kicks him again, aiming a little higher.  
  
Chanyeol comes into the kitchen, and freezes, turning such a fierce red that Sehun worries that he’s busted a blood vessel or two. Chanyeol opens his mouth to speak and nothing comes out but a croak. He closes his mouth, gulps, and then opens his mouth again, but Sehun beats him to the punch.  
  
“Chanyeol wants to know if you’re ready to go,” Sehun says, and Chanyeol nods, eyes following something. Sehun realizes, belatedly, that it’s a droplet of water running down his chest. Chanyeol’s eyes track it until it disappears beneath his towel, and suddenly, it’s a bit hotter in the kitchen.  
  
“Um,” Sehun says. “I’m going to. Um. Not be naked anymore.” He tries to go through the doorway, expecting Chanyeol to move, but Chanyeol doesn’t, and Sehun crashes into him, hands grabbing on to Chanyeol’s shoulders as Chanyeol’s hands instinctively clutch at his waist. Sehun can feel the heat of Chanyeol’s body radiating off of him, the warmth traveling from Sehun’s palms all the way up his arms.  
  
That’s when Sehun’s towel decides to fall.  
  
“My eyes are burning!” Jongin screams, and Junmyeon gasps.  
  
“Wow, I wasn’t expecting porn with breakfast,” Baekhyun says, and Kyungsoo chooses that moment to enter the kitchen.  
  
“Did I miss something?”  
  
Chanyeol makes a strange gurgling noise, and Sehun quickly takes a step back, bending down to retrieve his towel before wrapping it back around his waist, and then he skirts around Chanyeol and out into the living room.  
  
“That would have been a good album jacket for EXTACY,” Sehun hears Jongin say, but Sehun is more focused on the way he can still feel the heat of Chanyeol’s hands on the skin of his waist.  
  
-  
  
Sehun’s distracted for the rest of the morning, thinking about the look on Chanyeol’s face in the kitchen, and about Chanyeol’s panicked eyes, and about the way Chanyeol’s shoulders had felt so broad beneath his palms.  
  
He’s so disoriented that he doesn’t even protest this time when the stylist turns on the electric razor, and when he looks in the mirror after she’s finished, he’s horrified to realize that he’s almost used to the color.  
  
Today’s rehearsal is filled with stripper jokes. His new hair color results in Jongin calling him ‘Candy’ the whole morning, and Kyungsoo, at Baekhyun’s urging, sticks 1000W bills into Sehun’s underwear when he’s the first to nail a difficult part of the choreography.  
  
The teasing follows him into the elevator, and when Chanyeol steps in, Sehun is strangely nervous. As if Sehun’s knowledge of Chanyeol’s crush is permission, the other members conspire to have them sit next to each other. Sehun wishes they hadn’t, because Chanyeol, who is still too serious and sad, is making him feel all weird and leaving his stomach too unsettled to eat.  
  
Sehun cleans his tray first this time, but he can feel the weight of Chanyeol’s eyes on his back as he goes. At least, Sehun thinks grimly, Chanyeol is looking at him-- but now, Sehun is too anxious to look back.  
  
#  
  
 **7**  
  
This time, when Sehun drags Chanyeol out for bubble tea, he takes precautions.  
  
“Wait, let me have your tea,” Sehun says, pulling the drink out of Chanyeol’s reach. Chanyeol blinks, confused, just as he had been when Sehun ordered for him without asking. “I know you like me. It’s _fine_. Nothing has to change.”  
  
Sehun’s satisfied with this answer. He’s gone over it a lot, and thinks it’s the right one.  
  
Apparently, though, it isn’t. Chanyeol’s ears turn red, peeking out from under his hair, and the corners of his lips turn down. “I see,” Chanyeol says. “Look, I’m gonna... go.”  
  
When he stands up, his knees hit the table, tipping Sehun’s own bubble tea into his lap, and Sehun doesn’t bother watching Chanyeol leave as he tries to mop himself up.  
  
He opens the front door and Jongin is waiting for him on the couch, shoving popcorn into his mouth and laughing. “You’re an idiot.”  
  
“Shut up, Jongin. You don’t know anything,” Sehun snaps, the front of his sweatpants still wet with tea.  
  
“I know Chanyeol’s in his room with Baekhyun,” Jongin says, pointing with a buttery hand, and Sehun stomps off down the hallway.  
  
He opens the door to Chanyeol’s room, and Baekhyun has a comforting arm around Chanyeol, who looks miserable sitting on the edge of his bed.  
  
Sehun’s had that job before, and while he doesn’t mind sharing it with Baekhyun, who seems, sometimes, like Chanyeol’s super freaky mind twin more than some guy whose only known him a little over a year, Sehun dislikes the idea that he’s the reason Chanyeol needs comfort in the first place.  
  
“Can we talk?” Sehun asks.  
  
Baekhyun turns on him. “Didn’t you just do that?”  
  
“Go away.” Sehun makes a shooing motion toward Baekhyun, but Baekhyun doesn’t budge.  
  
“Why should I leave?” Baekhyun arches an eyebrow. “I’m not the one who’s sick of Chanyeol.”  
  
There’s a note of warning in his voice, reminding Sehun that he still hasn’t apologized today.  
  
“But I’m not-” Sehun shoves his hands deep into his pockets. “I was just tired. Chanyeol should know better than to take the things I say when I’m sleepy seriously.”  
  
“But you sounded like you meant it,” Chanyeol says, back hunched and head bowed. Sehun can remember seeing Chanyeol like this before, after grueling practices where he’d struggled to pick of the steps, but now it’s his fault and he doesn’t know how to fix it.  
  
What he does know is that even if the way Chanyeol likes him is different from the way that he likes Chanyeol, his day is just too quiet without Chanyeol by his side.  
  
“And I was thinking,” Chanyeol continues, “if you’re sick of me, maybe we shouldn’t hang out so much.”  
  
That’s the last thing that Sehun wants. Sehun wants Chanyeol’s big hands shoving at him playfully off-set and Chanyeol tugging at his shirt and Chanyeol laughing louder than he should directly into Sehun’s ear.  
  
“But we’ve always...” Sehun trails off and Chanyeol twists his hands together in his lap.  
  
“It’s not fine, Sehun.” Chanyeol sounds sad. “Yesterday, when you said that to me, I realized it’s not fine.”  
  
#  
  
 **10**  
  
Running into Chanyeol in the hallway, smelling the soft fragrance of Chanyeol’s shampoo and remembering the drag of Chanyeol’s fingertips across the skin of his waist as Chanyeol pulled his hands away, makes Sehun’s throat dry. “I’m sorry,” Sehun says in a rush, before Chanyeol can walk away. “I’m really sorry.” Chanyeol, who is already starting to step around him, pauses, and Sehun takes the opportunity to grab at his shirt. It’s a bit damp, like Chanyeol hadn’t bothered to dry off with a towel before putting his clothes. “For last night.”  
  
“Oh,” Chanyeol says. “That’s... that’s all right.” Chanyeol scratches at the back of his head, and his hair, already a mess, sticks up in every direction. “You were trying to do stuff, and I know I can be--”  
  
“I like your laugh,” Sehun says, letting go of Chanyeol’s shirt and looking down at his bare feet instead of at his friend. “You’re going to be late for your photoshoot.”  
  
“R-right,” Chanyeol says, and Sehun looks up at him out of the corner of his eye, and Chanyeol is looking at him, eyes opened as wide as they’ll go and lower lip sticking out like it always does when he’s surprised. He looks really dumb, but it’s better than when he’s sad, so Sehun figures it will do. “I’ll just...”  
  
Sehun feels uncomfortable, because he hates apologizing and he also hates not knowing what to do. It’s hard, dealing with all these _feelings_ , and it makes him curious about how long Chanyeol has wrestled with his. Sehun wonders if Chanyeol had just woken up one day and and realized that he liked Sehun as more than a friend. He wonders if Chanyeol had freaked out about it; if Chanyeol had thought about every time Sehun’s arm had brushed his own or Sehun’s hands had lingered too long on his shoulders. Mostly, Sehun wonders how he could have spent every day with Chanyeol, performing and eating and laughing and joking, and never have noticed.  
  
Sehun doesn’t consider himself unobservant. But Chanyeol has always been an open book, so somehow Sehun must have been reading the wrong pages.  
  
Now though, when he looks up to meet Chanyeol’s eyes, he can recognize a little of the longing in Chanyeol’s face, lurking at the corners of his mouth and in the set of his eyebrows, and he realizes it has always been there. His stomach twists up into an impossible knot, and his headache, which has been incessant enough to almost forget about, presses at the corners of his mind.  
  
“I guess I’d better...” Chanyeol says, and Sehun swallows. Chanyeol’s eyes follow the motion, and then he jerks his gaze away, large hands crushing the ends of the towel hanging around his neck.  
  
“Yeah,” Sehun says distractedly, because for some reason, when Chanyeol had spoken, Sehun’s own eyes had gravitated to Chanyeol’s mouth.  
  
The problem, Sehun decides later, is that apologizing hasn’t really fixed much at all, because Chanyeol still looks at him with sad eyes when he thinks Sehun isn’t paying attention, and Sehun thinks his tiny temper tantrum has caused more trouble than he ever could have anticipated.  
  
#  
  
 **14**  
  
Out of boredom, Sehun sweet-talks the stylist into adding a black leopard print stencil to the buzzed half of his head, and the new addition leaves the other members speechless when he walks into rehearsal.  
  
“I’m trying to get Tao to like me more,” Sehun says dully, and Baekhyun collects himself enough to say that something that tacky is bound to catch Tao’s attention.  
  
Jongin is still staring at the side of his head in horror when they enter the elevator to go up to lunch, mouth hanging open slightly, and Sehun has to force himself not to stuff his towel down Jongin’s throat to make him stop.  
  
Sehun feels like his boredom has paid off when the elevator doors open a few floors short of the cafeteria, and right away, Chanyeol’s eyes are fixed on him.  
  
“It’s awful, right?” Sehun asks, and he’s surprised, and pleased, to see that Chanyeol is smiling as he tries to process the monstrosity that is Sehun’s comeback style. Chanyeol’s smile widens as he comes to stand next to Sehun as the lift doors close.  
  
“It is,” Chanyeol says, with some of that characteristic laughter in his tone that Sehun hasn’t heard in two weeks worth of Fridays. “But you’d look good with any hairstyle.”  
  
It’s the opposite of their first showcase, when Sehun had carefully patted down the flyaways of Chanyeol’s crimped and fried hair, telling him not to worry because he still looked great.  
  
Sehun fidgets, scuffing the toe of his shoe on the floor with something akin to embarrassment, but Chanyeol’s smiling at him again, and he thinks maybe that’s worth looking like an idiot. Like this, Chanyeol’s elbow bumping his own, it feels almost like old times.  
  
#  
  
 **16**  
  
They’re in the dressing room, changing for their interview, and while he loops an extra long chain of golden flower charms around his neck, Jongin says, “Stop staring at Chanyeol while he’s changing his trousers. Your jaw is hanging open like you want his dick.”  
  
Sehun shuts his mouth so fast his teeth click and glares. “You would know,” he says, chucking Junmyeon’s studded and tasseled cowboy vest at Jongin’s face.  
  
Jongin makes a gagging sound from underneath the fabric. “Ew.”  
  
“You’re the one that said it,” Sehun says, scratching at where the tag of his tie-dye shirt is scraping his neck, and tries not to look when Chanyeol strips off his own shirt on the other side of the room.  
  
He shouldn’t be interested. He’s not the one with a... crush.  
  
Sehun turns Jongin’s words over in his mind during the interview, purposefully letting his eyes linger on the host’s short skirt. Noticing Sehun’s stare, she doubles her efforts, leaning forward in her seat as she asks him a question, as if to give him a glimpse of her cleavage.  
  
He takes in the view with mild interest, which he thinks is normal, until he notes that Jongin can’t seem to tear his eyes away from the sight.  
  
He mentally checks back into the interview when the host asks him suggestively, “Have you been using up all _your_ power on rapping? Or do you have a little bit left over for this interview?”  
  
Despite her display of skin, Sehun thinks she’s kind of annoying. Maybe, he thinks, it’ll be different with a more hands-on approach.  
  
“I have _plenty_ of energy left over,” Sehun says, standing up from his chair and walking towards her. “I’ve been saving it for you.”  
  
He can see Jongin gaping at him, and Baekhyun gives a low whistle. Junmyeon lifts both of his hands to cover his face and Sehun is pretty sure he can hear a faint and despairing “oh no.”  
  
The host seems frozen as he slides his fingers down her jaw and then uses his index finger to tilt her chin up, and Sehun thinks this is as good a time as any.  
  
Sehun’s no stranger to lipgloss, but the host’s lips feel waxy under his, and her perfume is an overly-flowery scent that’s almost suffocating as he slides his tongue into her mouth. She makes a high-pitched squeaking sound and Sehun pulls back.  
  
Even hands-on, he’s not interested.  
  
“Sehun, what are you doing?” Kyungsoo asks, with forced calm, and Sehun turns around. He hears a thud behind him and assumes that the host has slid out of her chair and onto the floor. The look on Chanyeol’s face makes Sehun’s chest ache, and he thinks even if it was for research purposes, maybe that wasn’t the best thing to do.  
  
Sehun somehow finds his way back to his chair and only half-listens as Junmyeon scrambles to make some bullshit up about how Sehun was just _“demonstrating EXO’s love for all their fans”_ as he helps the host up from the floor.  
  
The interview doesn’t last much longer than that, the host unable to recover enough from the shock to ask any more questions, and soon Kyungsoo is steering Sehun back to their dressing room with a hand on his neck, like Sehun is a puppy that pissed on the carpet.  
  
“So how was it?” Jongin says, still looking amazed at Sehun’s gutsiness. His expression looks extra stupid when combined with his outfit.  
  
“It was okay, I guess,” Sehun says. “But I don’t really like girls.” After he says it, his brain comes to a complete stop to process, and he realizes, with a sinking stomach, that while it’s always been true, he’s never really acknowledged it to himself or to anyone else.  
  
“Chanyeol!” he hears Baekhyun shout, and he looks over to where Chanyeol is shaking off Baekhyun’s grip on his arm, and he watches as Chanyeol quickly walks into the dressing room, Baekhyun hot on his heels and looking worried.  
  
“Still can’t take your eyes off him, huh?” Jongin asks, sounding smug and self-satisfied. “I’m not one to tell you I told you so-”  
  
Sehun distractedly snorts. “Yes, you are.”  
  
“-but I told you you wanted his dick.”  
  
“Someday,” Sehun says, “I’ll make you pay for all the misery you cause me.”  
  
“Yeah, sure,” Jongin says, seeming unconcerned. “I’m sure you will.”  
  
When they get into the van, Sehun is smashed into Chanyeol’s side, and he turns to him awkwardly, looking for the words to apologize. “Chanyeol, I-” As he starts to speak, Chanyeol lifts his thumb to Sehun’s mouth and wipes at the corner of it, dragging the pad along the line of Sehun’s lower lip before letting his hand drop back down to his lap.  
  
“You had lipstick,” Chanyeol says quietly, and he sounds so melancholy that Sehun feels like a total asshole.  
  
“Thanks,” Sehun says, and even if tomorrow, this will all be forgotten, Sehun wishes he’d never done it all.  
  
Chanyeol twists his body so he’s looking out the window, back to Sehun, and Sehun presses his fingers to his mouth. It still tingles. It’s funny, Sehun supposes, that even though it was the host that he kissed, it is Chanyeol’s touch that lingers on his lips.  
  
#  
  
 **17**  
  
Sehun wakes up thinking about the way the pad of Chanyeol’s thumb had felt dragging across the slightly chapped skin of his lower lip, and he’s so distracted that he’s late walking out into the hallway and misses Chanyeol on the way back from the shower.  
  
Instead, he bumps into Kyungsoo, who looks up at him sleepily and says, “You’d better not forget to apologize to Chanyeol, Sehun.”  
  
Sehun heaves a long-suffering sigh and nods, heading to the kitchen.  
  
Because he’s late, Jongin has somehow already made his way up into a chair and Junmyeon has finished eating his breakfast. Sehun flops into an empty seat and makes sad eyes at Baekhyun. Baekhyun is alarmed by whatever expression he sees on Sehun’s face and clutches his hot toddy tightly as though Sehun might take it away.  
  
“Everything alright there, maknae?” he asks and Jongin squints at him.  
  
“What’s wrong with your face? It looks more constipated than usual.”  
  
Junmyeon frowns. “Don’t make him cranky, Jongin. He still needs to apologize to Chanyeol today.”  
  
“I don’t know how you do it, Baekhyun,” Sehun says, scratching at the tabletop with a fingernail. “Being gay is too hard.”  
  
“Wait,” Junmyeon says, “Baekhyun is gay?”  
  
“Goddamnit, Sehun,” Baekhyun says exasperatedly, slapping his hand on the table. He pauses. “Wait, _you’re_ gay?”  
  
Jongin makes a face. “Since when is everyone gay?”  
  
“ _I’m_ not gay,” Junmyeon says, and Baekhyun coughs awkwardly. Sehun decides not to mention Junmyeon’s obvious crush on Kyuhyun (or the blow job incident, because he might need Baekhyun’s help later).  
  
Chanyeol appears in the doorway. “Are you ready to-- Is everything... okay in here?”  
  
Jongin has his face pushed right up near Sehun’s, studying it closely, like somehow the gay might show in his eyes.  
  
Sehun shoves Jongin away with a hand on his forehead. “It’s not like it’s written on my face!”  
  
“Yes,” Junmyeon says, hastily standing. “Everything’s fine. Let’s get going.” He looks down at Sehun, and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t forget-”  
  
“My hair appointment. In half an hour. I know. I got it.”  
  
“Don’t forget the other thing, either,” Junmyeon adds, as subtly as a brick through a window. Then suddenly, like he’s putting two and two together, a light goes on behind Junmyeon’s eyes. He looks from Sehun over to Chanyeol, and then back at Sehun, and smiles. It’s kind of creepy.  
  
Jongin, who is watching Junmyeon curiously, seems to catch on to whatever Junmyeon is thinking. “Hold up,” he says, pointing at Sehun. “You’re...” He moves his index finger to Chanyeol. “And he’s... you’re _both_...”  
  
“Both what?” Chanyeol asks, and Baekhyun lunges over the table when an evil smirk spreads across Jongin’s face, slapping a hand over Jongin’s mouth as Sehun realizes what he’s implying.  
  
“Running late!” Baekhyun says, far cheerier than usual, and if Chanyeol weren’t moping, he probably would have noticed, but he’s too busy trying not to look at Sehun to pay much notice to Baekhyun’s antics. “Time for you to go.”  
  
After they’ve gone, Sehun tries to thank Baekhyun, who’s wiping Jongin’s spit off of his hand with the edge of his sleep shirt. “I didn’t do it for you,” Baekhyun snaps. “I did it for Chanyeol. Do you know how he’d feel if-” Baekhyun stops, as if he’s unsure how much Sehun knows. “I don’t want to see him get hurt.”  
  
“Me either,” Sehun says, as sincerely as he can, and Baekhyun narrows his eyes searchingly, like he’s trying to read Sehun’s mind. “I’m not sure how-”  
  
“Baekhyun,” Jongin interrupts carelessly, “why does your hand taste like lotion? What were you doing this morning?” He waggles his eyebrows, and Baekhyun pats at his pocket, where he always keeps his phone.  
  
“You’re dead to me, Jongin,” Baekhyun deadpans, but Sehun thinks he might be a little serious. Baekhyun seems to have lost interest in his conversation with Sehun in favor of boring holes into Jongin’s face with his eyes.  
  
Kyungsoo’s arrival to table coincides with Hyeonkyun knocking on the kitchen doorframe, brandishing one of Sehun’s sweatshirts and a ballcap and Sehun, who has already brushed his teeth, gets up to leave.  
  
Sehun grins at Jongin disarmingly, and Jongin blinks. “We should do something together after the interview,” Sehun says. “I feel like I owe you one.”  
  
“For what?” Jongin calls after him, but Sehun doesn’t answer as he follows Hyeonkyun out the front door.  
  
-  
  
Somehow, Sehun ends up next to Chanyeol during lunch again, and Junmyeon keeps scooting into Sehun’s personal space until he’s crowded out of his seat and ends up smushed into Chanyeol’s side instead. Chanyeol fumbles with his chopsticks and Sehun, realizing belatedly that he hadn’t yet that day, mumbles an apology.  
  
Caught off-guard, Chanyeol pushes his lower lip out until it covers the upper as though thinking hard about something. His lips are full and pink without any gloss, and Sehun wonders what it would be like to kiss him.  
  
As soon as he thinks it, Sehun’s body goes cold, like someone’s poured a pail of ice water over him, and he immediately tries to put distance between himself and Chanyeol. Chanyeol’s lip pushes out even further at this, and Sehun decides he isn’t hungry anymore.  
  
It doesn’t even make sense, he tells himself, that he would want to kiss Chanyeol. He’s known Chanyeol since he was fourteen, and in that time, he’s seen Chanyeol put all manner of disgusting foods in his mouth. Plus, Chanyeol is too big, and too floppy, and too energetic, and there’s absolutely no reason for Sehun to even consider what it would be like to feel Chanyeol’s hand curl around his nape. But then he remembers the way Chanyeol’s hands had felt against his bare waist, and he gulps.  
  
Sehun remembers all the times he’s caught Chanyeol staring at _his_ mouth, and though Chanyeol has seen Sehun eat all manner of disgusting foods too, he thinks Chanyeol might want to kiss him anyway.  
  
“Earth to Sehun,” Jongin says, waving a hand in front of Sehun’s face, “we only have ten more minutes for lunch and if you’re not going to eat those potatoes, I will.”  
  
Chanyeol starts eating more quickly, and his forearm brushes against Sehun’s, and Sehun’s shocked at how much he notices the small touch now, when it’s so much less than the things they’ve done casually for years. Chanyeol’s skin is soft, and Sehun has never really considered it before, but he wants to run his hand up the inside of Chanyeol’s arm; to trace the vein up to the crook of his elbow and feel Chanyeol’s pulse quicken beneath the pads of his fingertips.  
  
Sehun thinks he might want to do those same things with his mouth, and the idea is almost frightening. Except that it’s not, because it’s Chanyeol.  
  
And if he goes back, in his memory, Sehun can recall hundreds of heavy looks Chanyeol has sent in his direction over the past three years, and he thinks some of those might have meant that Chanyeol wants to kiss his way up Sehun’s arm, too.  
  
“Go ahead,” Sehun say belatedly, in response to Jongin’s inquiry, and Jongin almost face-faults in surprise.  
  
“Now I know something’s wrong,” Baekhyun says. “Really wrong.”  
  
Junmyeon has a peculiar expression on his face, something akin to deviousness. He leans around Sehun to look at Chanyeol. “Chanyeol, can you check Sehun’s temperature for me?”  
  
Sehun tries to inch away from where he’s squished into Chanyeol’s side again and Chanyeol stares. “But you’re sitting right next to him.”  
  
“My hands are full,” Junmyeon says, splitting his chopsticks between his hands. “Of... chopsticks.”  
  
Chanyeol sighs resignedly, like he had the time Sehun had accidentally clogged the toilet trying to flush all of Jongin’s underwear and Chanyeol had been forced to help him clean it up, and raises a hand to touch Sehun’s forehead.  
  
Chanyeol’s hands have always felt softer than they look, and his palm is cool against Sehun’s skin. He feels heat climb up his face, and jerks his head away from Chanyeol’s hand before Chanyeol can feel it.  
  
“I’m not sick,” Sehun says, and tries to ignore the hurt look on Chanyeol’s face. His throat is dry.  
  
“You might be!” Junmyeon says enthusiastically, as Baekhyun laughs behind his hand. Jongin looks intrigued, and Kyungsoo looks dubious. “You never know!” His smile is so earnest that Sehun kind of wants to punch him, but that would be like punching a kitten so he doesn’t. “I’ve heard from our Super Junior seniors that holding hands can prevent colds.”  
  
Sehun studies him for a moment, and almost rethinks his decision not to put his fist into Junmyeon’s smile. “Oh yeah?” Sehun replies sarcastically. “Well _I’ve_ heard from our Super Junior seniors that sucking co-”  
  
“His hands are full!” Baekhyun says, interrupting Sehun before he can spill the incriminating winter health tip, “Of chopsticks!”  
  
Jongin picks up on Junmyeon’s game, and smiles wickedly. “To get an accurate read on his temperature,” he says, “you know you need to check it _rectally_.”  
  
Kyungsoo, who has just taken a sip of his guava juice, chokes, and coughs until his throat is clear. “Jongin,” he says, measuredly, “are you volunteering to stick a finger up Sehun’s butt?”  
  
“Ew,” Jongin says. “No. I was volunteering Chanyeol.”  
  
“It’s so sweet that you’re worried about my health,” Sehun says, and Chanyeol ducks his head, obscuring his face. “I can’t wait until we spend time together this afternoon.”  
  
“Yeah, if you’re well enough.” He furrows his eyebrows in faux-concern. “You might need to spend the afternoon in bed with Cha-” Baekhyun kicks him in the shin, which cuts Jongin short as he rubs at his leg and pouts.  
  
“I think I’ve lost my appetite,” Chanyeol says, and something in Sehun’s gut drops. Chanyeol’s silence makes Sehun wonder if he’s read the whole situation wrong, and the way Chanyeol likes him isn’t the way Sehun had thought he did.  
  
After Chanyeol leaves the table, Sehun points at Jongin and Junmyeon. “You both disgust me.” Sehun turns to Baekhyun. “Thanks for the support. I’m sorry I told everyone you were gay at breakfast.”  
  
Kyungsoo’s head snaps up, spoon dangling from his mouth. “Wait, Baekhyun is gay?” he says around the silverware, and Sehun pretends, for his own sanity, that he doesn’t see the interest in Kyungsoo’s eyes.  
  
Jongin doesn’t quite have Sehun’s skills of self-preservation. “Kyungsoo? You too? Is being gay our new concept or something?”  
  
“I think that’s our eternal concept,” Sehun says condescendingly, reaching across the table to pat Jongin’s hand. “We’ll do something super heterosexual and manly this afternoon, don’t worry.”  
  
In retrospect, Sehun thinks the conversation is even funnier as he watches Jongin get zipped into his corduroy, daisy-patterned jumpsuit as they prepare for the MNET interview later that afternoon.  
  
-  
  
“There are several risks involved with this kind of piercing, and that’s why we had you sign the waiver beforehand. Would you like something to numb the pain?”  
  
Jongin looks up at Sehun from his spot in the chair, eyes alight with fear, and Sehun resists the urge to cackle.  
  
“No, I can take it,” Jongin says, and if Baekhyun were here, there would have already been at least three buttsex jokes in response to that statement, but Sehun’s afraid to open his mouth in case his awful glee comes spilling out. “Are you sure this is safe?”  
  
“Perfectly safe,” the piercer says. “Mostly. So pull down your undies and let’s take a look.”  
  
Jongin slides his briefs down his thighs and Sehun tunes out the piercer’s explanation, instead reminiscing about how he’d conned Jongin into sneaking out with him to Hongdae to get a symbol of their manly brotherhood. “Donghae and Eunhyuk got them done together,” Sehun had said convincingly, “and Eunhyuk-seonbae told me that not only did it improve his dancing, but it also helped him... win over IU. Don’t you want an IU of your very own?”  
  
“So what’s the incentive for you?” Jongin had asked suspiciously. “What would you even do with your own IU? Would you guys braid each other’s hair and talk about how hot Chanyeol-oppa is?”  
  
Sehun hadn’t eviscerated him then, but it had been a close call. He’d avoided thinking about the way his heartbeat had sped up at Chanyeol’s name, and instead had given Jongin what he hoped passed for a sincere smile. “We’re bros, dude. I would be willing to do this to help _you_.”  
  
And now, he’s got Jongin with his underwear around his knees and his thighs strapped down while a man with a massive needle examines his dick, and Sehun is sad that Jongin’s fansite noona’s can’t see him now.  
  
Jongin’s scream, as the piercer completes the procedure, is delicious. Sehun is pretty sure those are tears at the corners of Jongin’s eyes. His face is ashen as the at-home care instructions are given to him in excruciating detail, and he flinches when the piercer pats his knee. “I’ll be back with the rest of the paperwork.”  
  
“Sehun,” Jongin whispers, panicked. “He said I might have to piss sitting down!”  
  
“There, there,” Sehun says. “You’re lazy enough that it’ll feel like you’ve evolved.” Sehun pulls out his phone and takes a few quick photos. It’s good lighting, and the hoop glints silver in the pictures. “Looking good, Dancing Machine.”  
  
“Why did I have to go first, again? This was all your idea.” Sehun doesn’t answer, because it’s a rhetorical question. Sehun had already told Jongin earlier that it was because Jongin was braver and manlier, and that maybe watching Jongin get it done would be “inspiring.”  
  
“Okay,” the piercer says, coming back through the door with a few papers in his hand. He gives them to Jongin. “You guys are free to go.”  
  
“Wait, Sehun, isn’t it your turn?” Jongin’s face is still grey and he cringes as he pulls up his underwear and jeans.  
  
“Yeah, no,” Sehun says, unable to suppress his gloating smile any longer.  
  
“It was just an appointment for one, right?” the piercer asks, and when Sehun nods, Jongin looks woozy.  
  
“I told you I’d get you back,” Sehun says, and Jongin screws his face up, momentarily confused.  
  
“When did you say that?” Jongin asks, and Sehun’s lucky the pain has left Jongin a little bit weak because it gives him a running start to the subway.  
  
“You can’t run forever!” Jongin yells across the crowded subway station, pulling his scarf tighter around his face and checking his sunglasses, and as he slips into a subway car just as the doors are closing, Sehun feels vindicated.  
  
-  
  
This time, when Sehun punches in the doorcode and walks into the dorm, Chanyeol and Baekhyun are sitting on the couch, watching a movie and sharing a bowl of popcorn. Baekhyun is fussing with his phone, but he looks up when the door opens.  
  
“Where’s Jongin?” he asks.  
  
Sehun pauses, building the anticipation. “I might have tricked him into getting his dick pierced.”  
  
The silence is deafening.  
  
“Did he die along with his pride, or... ?” Baekhyun is facing him entirely now, pushing the popcorn bowl into Chanyeol’s lap and patting the bit of sofa in between them.  
  
Sehun hesitates for a moment, but then his desire to share the pictures overwhelms his reticence, and he sits down. “Want to see the pictures I uploaded to Daum?”  
  
He scrolls to the last couple of snapshots on his phone and Chanyeol leans closer to get a better look, his breath hot on Sehun’s neck. When the pictures load, Chanyeol’s laugh is deep and sincere, and Sehun thinks that this is an unexpected bonus of his plan; getting see Chanyeol’s joyful face for the first time in so very long.  
  
Sehun hears the door and bolts to his bedroom, locking himself in. He creeps out to the kitchen for food when he hears Jongin bitching about him to Taemin on the phone through the thin wall between their rooms, and runs into Kyungsoo scrapbooking at the table. He’s got the pictures from Sehun’s phone.  
  
“Where’d you get those?” Sehun asks, laughter building up anew as he takes in the ridiculousness of his afternoon one more time. “Daum?”  
  
“No, Naver. But they went viral. There are Youtube videos now-- just the pictures and an awkward Nicki Minaj backtrack.”  
  
“All my dreams have come true,” Sehun says, and Kyungsoo doesn’t respond, too busy applying adhesive to the back of the photos to pay Sehun’s schadenfreude any mind.  
  
Later, though, when he gets cc’d on an email from Kris to the entirety of EXO-K, he laughs so hard he cries. It’s moments later that Jongin is banging on that thin wall between their rooms, screaming “Allkpop? Really? I can’t believe you put pictures of my dick on the internet, Oh Sehun! I’m going to _kill you_ and throw your body in the Han!”  
  
It’s too bad that when Sehun wakes up, none of this will have happened, but he’ll cherish the memory of it, and maybe of Chanyeol’s contagious laughter bubbling out to fill the room, for a long time.  
  
#

**20**  
  
Sehun is tired of living the same day over and over. He’s lived the sort of life where he’s constantly working towards something. To be trapped, stagnant, never able to move forward, is frustrating.  
  
Even more frustrating is how, no matter how many times, or in how many ways, he tries to make things right with Chanyeol, each morning he’s back to square one.  
  
There’s also the fact that every time he redoes this day, he uncovers more and more things he’d never noticed; there are things about Chanyeol, and his reactions to Chanyeol that seem so much more obvious now that Sehun knows where to look.  
  
Sick of the monotony, Sehun remains in the studio during lunch, running through old routines to try and blow off some steam. His muscles still easily recall the steps for History, and he closes his eyes, taking a break from studying his reflection in the mirror.  
  
“It doesn’t look so impressive with only one person,” says Chanyeol, and Sehun spins around, surprised.  
  
“What are you doing here?” It sounds accusatory, so Sehun quickly adds, “Not that I mind. I just thought you weren’t talking to me.”  
  
Chanyeol’s cheeks are puffed up full of air. “Baekhyun said-- I wanted to see your new hair.”  
  
“Well,” Sehun says, like he’s talking to a rabbit that might bolt at any moment, “what do you think?”  
  
“I think you’d look good with any hairstyle.”  
  
“That’s because you like me.” Sehun is straightforward, leaving Chanyeol no room to guess what he means. Chanyeol sucks on his lower lip to buy himself time, and Sehun sighs. “It’s true, isn’t it?”  
  
Chanyeol, who is wearing his favorite over-sized hoodie, the one with the now-fraying hem that Sehun had bought him for his seventeenth birthday, hides his hands away in the front pockets. Sehun knows Chanyeol’s only doing it to keep from twisting his hands together the way he always does when he’s nervous.  
  
“Yeah,” Chanyeol says, “I do.”  
  
Chanyeol seems almost relieved that Sehun’s said it for him and that all he had to do was agree. Then he straightens his back and smiles, smaller than usual, but still genuine.  
  
“That’s okay,” Sehun tells him. “Really.”  
  
“It’s not okay. Because I don’t know how to be just your friend anymore.” Chanyeol laughs, helplessly. “I really like you. I really, really like you.” He’s giving Sehun that look again; like Sehun’s taken away his kitten or like Sehun’s asked him for advice about girls. Sehun is coming to realize that there’s a name for that face, and it’s heartbreak.  
  
Sehun’s heart is beating quickly, in a way that he could blame on dancing. But the truth is, he’s actually just scared. He’s unsure if he’ll ever look at Chanyeol the same way again, even if he woke up tomorrow and the days had moved forward.  
  
Scarier yet, he’s not sure if he wants to.  
  
“I really--” Sehun starts, but even after countless repetitions of this same January 18th, he still doesn’t know how this sentence is supposed to end.  
  
-  
  
After twenty renditions of the same interview, Sehun is so bored he’s sure he’s going to decompose on camera. He can imagine the delightful headlines. `Interview Ages EXO-K’s Maknae Before Our Eyes!` He consoles himself by mouthing along to everyone’s answers, and making rude faces at the host every time she turns away.  
  
They’ve made him wear his pastel pink tuxedo shoes without socks, and as he sweats under the studio lights, his feet start to stick to the leather. It itches, and Sehun might have to sit through this interview again, but he’ll be damned if he does it with itching feet. He bends over in his seat, ignoring Kyungsoo’s hissed “what are you doing?”  
  
“My feet itch,” Sehun whispers back neutrally, and Kyungsoo nods subtly, returning his attention to the host, who is asking Junmyeon about their _stupid_ concept for their comeback and listening to his _stupider_ answer.  
  
His jacket is tight on his shoulders as he unties the laces, hooking his index fingers into the heels of his shoes and pulling them off. He sticks his bare feet out in front of him, flexing his toes and enjoying his freedom, and the cameraman gives him a strange look. Sehun shrugs back at him, and his jacket is still too tight across his back, so he slips it down off his shoulders, tugging at the sleeve and giving himself enough room to pull his arms out. He throws the ruffled bolero jacket carelessly on the floor behind, and the rhinestones clink against the tile.  
  
Stretching his neck and relishing the cool air on the bare skin, he notices Chanyeol staring at him, alarmed, but he decides to ignore it. The rough material of his eyelet lace shirt, sticky with accumulated sweat, itches too. Sehun barely thinks about it before he pulls it over his head. The cameraman’s jaw is dropping, but his bandmates, save for Chanyeol, have yet to notice his impromptu striptease. He thinks it’s kind of hilarious that, had he been whispering with Jongin, Junmyeon would have glared at him in a second, but here he is, stripping in the middle of a livestream, while thousands of fans watch on the internet, and Junmyeon doesn’t even look in his direction. He thinks that might say something about their occupation.  
  
Now, it feels like a challenge to see how much he can take off before someone tries to stop him. Chanyeol is making small choked noises, which garners Kyungsoo’s attention just as Sehun accidently elbows Jongin in the process of unbuttoning his capris. He shimmies out them without standing up, as Kyungsoo watches in abject horror and Jongin chides him to watch his elbows without sparing him a glance. He shakes the capris off his ankles, and reaches for the waistband of his briefs.  
  
The host turns to ask him about Lu Han’s opinion on his hair, but she doesn’t get the chance, words catching in her throat as Sehun turns around to reveal his bare ass to the camera.  
  
Chanyeol drops his mic.  
  
Everyone turns to look at the loud echo, and Sehun makes a peace sign and smiles.  
  
“Sehun, what the--” Junmyeon swallows the swear, but his eyebrows are knitted so tightly together that Sehun is almost worried that his face is going to collapse inward.  
  
“Leader, it’s too hot.”  
  
“We have air conditioning,” the host says, finally finding her voice, but Sehun thinks she sounds fairly unenthusiastic about the offer.  
  
“Maknae, no one wants to see that,” Baekhyun snaps. “Put your ugly clothes back on.”  
  
“Sehun you can’t show your,” he mimes jacking off and lifts his eyebrows, “all over the internet. _To our fans._ ”  
  
Junmyeon lets loose an awful wheeze, like he’s taking a desperate gulp for air in the midst of drowning, and gesture violently with his arms for Sehun to clothe himself. “Sehun-”  
  
“Shut up, Jongin,” Sehun says, as he obeys, reluctantly, bending over to grab his briefs, and mooning the camera. “At least my dick isn’t _pierced._ ”  
  
Jongin vocalizes a scandalized “my dick isn’t pierced!”, but it’s too late, because Sehun’s back in his underwear, which leaves Junmyeon free to turn to Jongin with a speculative expression. Jongin is left to fend off Junmyeon and a curious Baekhyun, who is asking strangely invasive questions about foreskin sensitivity and urination, while Kyungsoo still hasn’t moved, looking a bit more like a corpse than an idol. Sehun sits back in his uncomfortable chair smugly, pleased at the chaos he’s caused, and meets the host’s intrigued eyes. He smiles at her blandly, until he observes Chanyeol picking up his mic out of the corner of his eye.  
  
When Chanyeol looks up at him, his face is soft; the distress lines that had gathered around his mouth and eyes fading beneath a huge, Chanyeol smile, complete with teeth and eye twitches and a scrunched up nose, Sehun is happy to grin back, offering a wide smile of his own. Sehun feigns a shiver, rubbing his hands up his arms, and Chanyeol cracks, laughing loudly and wildly as everyone once again turns their attention to Sehun.  
  
There’s something satisfying about sharing a laugh with Chanyeol that leaves Sehun’s toes curling, and it makes him think of countless other times they’ve been the only ones in on a joke like this, chuckling in a situation that is funny to the two of them alone.  
  
A lot of Sehun and Chanyeol’s friendship has been like that; things only the two of them get. It’s a connection that would hurt Sehun to lose, because in a lot of ways, they’ve grown up together, and Chanyeol’s understanding is something he can always depend on, same as the biting cold of Seoul winter or Jongin’s terrible taste in footwear.  
  
“Sehun,” Junmyeon says, “you are in so much trouble.”  
  
“Sure I am,” Sehun says, and shrugs, because there’s nothing he can do about it now, and it will never have happened tomorrow. Still, the pleasant warmness that had spread through him at Chanyeol’s laugh makes him feel too flush to put the rest of his clothes back on. Sehun likes to think that no one really minds, especially not the host, who seems to have an obsession with Sehun’s belly button that he’s not going to even try to understand.  
  
In the dressing room, as they change to go back to the dorm, Sehun catches Chanyeol laughing to himself again, shaking his head in disbelief, and waits for Chanyeol to look at him. Chanyeol seems to feel his stare, and returns it, and Sehun thinks back to earlier, in the dance studio, when Chanyeol had told Sehun he liked him and Sehun hadn’t said anything back.  
  
“Hey,” Sehun says, as Chanyeol starts to drop his gaze, “I’m...” Sehun stops, and licks at his lips. “I’m the opposite of sick of you.” Chanyeol doesn’t move, like he’s waiting for Sehun to say something else. “So even if... it has to be different-” No more of Sehun’s hand curled around Chanyeol’s wrist, or Sehun’s toes sliding up Chanyeol’s calf, or lying next to each other in Chanyeol’s bed while Chanyeol definitely doesn’t cry. “Even if it has to be different, we’ll be okay.”  
  
Chanyeol, when Sehun finishes, takes a deep breath, holding the air in his lungs for a minute before releasing it heavily, with an audible sigh. “Yeah,” he says, “Maybe we will be.”  
  
#  
  
 **21**  
  
Sehun wakes up with the same pounding headache he went to sleep with, Junmyeon hovering over him with a disappointed frown on his his face.  
  
Sehun scrunches up his eyes and groans. “I’m not late.”  
  
Junmyeon pauses, surprised. “What?”  
  
Sehun rolls over and says into his pillow, “And don’t call me a jerk. I know I have to apologize to Chanyeol.”  
  
“I-” Junmyeon starts. Then: “okay.”  
  
Turning back over, Sehun shoves his blankets down, ignoring Junmyeon, who is still standing next to his bed looking dumbfounded, and sits up. “Ugh, I hate Friday. You always drip water on my face on Friday.”  
  
“But I didn’t--” Junmyeon says.  
  
“Not _yet_ ,” Sehun says, swinging his feet over the edge of the bed and grabbing a random shirt off the floor. “But you were _going_ to.”  
  
“I was going to?”  
  
Sehun doesn’t bother to answer him, slipping the shirt on before walking out of their room and into the hallway. The collision with Chanyeol is much harder when Sehun is moving so much faster, and Chanyeol lets out an “oomph” when Sehun barrels into his chest, immediately reaching out to steady Sehun before he can fall backward, catching his arms at the bicep and pulling him straight.  
  
“Morning,” Sehun says. “Maybe I should watch where I’m going.” There’s not enough space between them. Before all of this, Chanyeol’s hands on his arms wouldn’t have felt electric, but now, even after Chanyeol drops his hands and steps backward, Sehun can still feel the current running up and down the skin.  
  
“Morning,” Chanyeol replies, his voice even lower from disuse, the way it always sounds when Chanyeol wakes up. “I have-”  
  
“To leave early for a photoshoot,” Sehun says. “I know. But you’ve still got about forty minutes.”  
  
“How do you...” Chanyeol is so surprised he actually returns Sehun’s look, and Sehun thinks it’s actually pretty useful to know the future. “I mean, yeah.”  
  
“You only take ten minutes to get dressed when someone else is going to do your hair,” Sehun says. “So that means you can spare five minutes to talk to me.”  
  
“About what?” Chanyeol says, and Sehun’s not sure why he’d never noticed just how great Chanyeol’s voice is. It slides like honey down his spine, which is probably the gayest thing Sehun’s thought in weeks. Except for the whole kissing thing. “I thought you were sick of me.”  
  
“Chanyeol,” Sehun says, lifting a hand to curl his fingers around a handful of Chanyeol’s shirt at his stomach, knuckles brushing at Chanyeol’s abs. Chanyeol shivers, and Sehun’s not sure if it’s from the touch or the cool air on his still wet skin. “We’ve known each other forever. If I was _really_ going to get sick of you, it would have happened years ago.” He runs his tongue across his teeth, wincing at the thin film on the unbrushed surfaces, and exhales. “And you know how I get. About my calculus homework.”  
  
Sehun is actually kind of shit at apologies. “Yes,” Chanyeol says. “I do.” He shifts his weight from foot to foot, scrunching his whole face up. “It’s...” There’s conflict in his eyes. If Sehun hadn’t already known how Chanyeol feels about him, he would have missed it. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. For overreacting.”  
  
Sehun debates moving past Chanyeol now, and letting the conversation stand, but that, Sehun thinks, would be the selfish option, because Chanyeol looks so insecure. Sehun prefers the Chanyeol who stares at himself in the mirror and nods in approval, and the Chanyeol that winks at fansite cameras because he knows how much they like him. It’s really... Even if the next time he wakes up, Chanyeol will feel sad again, that doesn’t mean Sehun would feel good about leaving him sad today.  
  
So Sehun steels himself, and narrows his eyes at Chanyeol with determination, pushing his knuckles harder into Chanyeol’s stomach until Chanyeol’s gaze returns to his, and bites his lip. “I...” His mouth is so _dry_. “It’s okay, you know.” That’s not specific, and Chanyeol is probably confused. “We’ll be okay, I mean.” He crushes the fabric in his palm. Chanyeol’s breathing has sped up, and he can feel his stomach pressing against the flats of his fingers. “Things between us. Those’ll be okay.”  
  
Chanyeol’s lips part, and there it is again. That urge to see if Chanyeol’s lips are as soft and inviting as they look. It would be easy, Sehun knows, to lean forward and press their mouths together, and maybe lick into Chanyeol’s mouth and taste the spearmint toothpaste he knows Chanyeol prefers even though it’s inferior to the wintermint that Sehun’s always used. And--  
  
And that’s not something Sehun should be thinking, and maybe it’s too early in the morning for this conversation after all. “Never mind,” Sehun mumbles, letting go of Chanyeol’s shirt like it’s on fire. This time it is Sehun that escapes behind a closed door, locking himself in the bathroom so Kyungsoo can’t walk in, and leaving Chanyeol standing bewildered in the hallway, large hand against his own stomach where Sehun’s hand had been.  
  
-  
  
When he can no longer ignore Kyungsoo’s pounding on the bathroom door, Sehun splashes water on his face one last time before undoing the lock and going out to the kitchen. Grabbing the water bottle from the fridge to pour himself a glass, Sehun says without turning around, “Jongin, get out from under the table before you hit your head.”  
  
Jerking awake, Jongin smacks into the table anyway and growls sleepily. When Sehun turns around, Baekhyun is looking at him strangely.  
  
“Why are you staring at me?” Sehun says, taking the seat next to Junmyeon.  
  
“You’re much more observant than usual this morning.”  
  
Sehun smirks. “Actually, I’m psychic.”  
  
Baekhyun rolls his eyes, and Sehun focuses on trying to snatch pieces of Junmyeon’s breakfast to distract himself from what had happened in the hallway earlier.  
  
“If you’re psychic,” Baekhyun says, taking a sip of his hot toddy, “tell me what I’m about to say.”  
  
“That I should apologize to Chanyeol,” Sehun replies around a mouthful of Junmyeon’s rice, “which I already did, by the way.”  
  
Baekhyun is surprised, but then pleased, taking another sip of his drink and looking relieved.  
  
“No way,” Jongin says, shoving his face into Sehun’s space again, like the closer he is, the more capable he’ll be of spotting a lie.  
  
“Sure I am,” Sehun says. “For example, Junmyeon is about to freak out about Baekhyun being gay.”  
  
Junmyeon drops his chopsticks. “Wait, Baekhyun is gay?”  
  
Sehun pushes his chair back half a meter right as Baekhyun lunges at him, taking Junmyeon’s bowl with him. “And then,” Sehun says carelessly, “Baekhyun is going to try to strangle me.” Baekhyun clutches angrily at the air in the space that Sehun has just vacated.  
  
“I’m going to kill you later,” Baekhyun says. “In your sleep. I’m going to put your pillow over your face and watch you slowly suffocate, and then I’m going laugh. I’m going to laugh forever, and tell everyone in later interviews that you were into auto-erotic asphyxiation and it was a tragic masturbation accident.”  
  
“Don’t you think that’s a bit much?” Sehun asks, and Baekhyun makes a thwarted scream that Sehun thinks is incredibly satisfying.  
  
“I’ll show you a bit much-”  
  
“Children,” Jongin says, trying to hang his spoon on his nose, eyes crossed, “act your age.”  
  
Sehun snatches the spoon and clonks him on the top of his head, just hard enough to earn a hiss.  
  
Baekhyun glowers, and Junmyeon just looks resignedly amused, reaching toward Sehun to reclaim his bowl.  
  
Sehun remembers that this is when Chanyeol arrives. He ignores the twinge in his chest, and turns to Junmyeon. “Chanyeol’s coming, so I’ll finish your breakfast,” he says, bringing the bowl closer to his chest and out of Junmyeon’s reach.  
  
Junmyeon gapes at him, before nodding slowly. “Right,” he says. “Don’t forget-”  
  
“My haircut. In a half an hour. I got it.”  
  
“All this time,” Jongin says. “All this time, and you’ve known when the members of SNSD are going to be naked backstage, and you never helped a friend out?”  
  
“Sorry,” Sehun says, and offers everyone an angelic smile. “It’s against the psychic code to use my powers to aid perverts.”  
  
“But think of it,” Jongin says dreamily as he tugs at the sleeve of Sehun’s shirt, “just tits everywhere, nipples _everywhere_.”  
  
Sehun pries Jongin’s hand off. “Get off, you plebeian.”  
  
Chanyeol’s shadow casts along the tiles, and Sehun doesn’t look at the doorway, where he knows Chanyeol will be standing with his big black sweatshirt and his skinny jeans, too big feet in the Canadian flag socks Wu Fan had given for Christmas that match nothing Chanyeol owns.  
  
Chanyeol’s voice cracks as he speaks. Sehun wonders if Chanyeol is looking at him, because everyone goes quiet, and he’s pretty sure only Jongin actually thinks he can see the future. “Are you ready to go?”  
  
“Holy shit,” Jongin says. “Sehun, man, we have to go gambling.”  
  
“You’re underage,” Junmyeon says, as he stands up from the table. “And that’s illegal. No getting arrested during comeback promotions.”  
  
“Who’s getting arrested?” Chanyeol says and Sehun is pleased that Chanyeol sounds less upset than most of the other mornings, but his presence in the kitchen is making something hot crawl around under Sehun’s skin. He shifts in his chair, trying to get rid of the feeling, and glares when Jongin pokes him in the cheek.  
  
“Sehun is psychic,” Jongin says. Sehun bats Jongin’s hand away from his face and picks up the spare set of chopsticks on the table so he can distract himself with eating Junmyeon’s leftovers.  
  
“Psychic?” Without looking, Sehun knows Chanyeol’s eyebrows are raised, eyes reflecting the kitchen light and lips parted in curiosity. Sometimes, Sehun knows Chanyeol so well that it hurts.  
  
“Pity you never told us,” Baekhyun says, smirking skeptically and tipping his chair back. “You could have saved us a lot of trauma. Like warning us that time before we all came back from shopping and found Jongin alone in the living room with his fingers up his--”  
  
“I told you,” Jongin interrupts, slapping his hand on the table, “that was for _science_.”  
  
Baekhyun scoffs. “Sure it was.”  
  
Chanyeol clears his throat and Junmyeon pushes in his chair. “Okay,” he says as he and Chanyeol head for the front door, “Sehun, the whole psychic thing-- just... don’t break anything before the interview later today.” Jongin, who had been trying to imitate Baekhyun by leaning back in his chair, loses his balance and falls forward, into the edge of the table with a painful-sounding thump. Junmyeon sighs, with the air of someone forced to champion a lost cause. “Or any _one_. Please.”  
  
Before the door closes, Sehun can’t stop himself from sneaking one small look at Chanyeol, out of the corner of his eye. Chanyeol has his hands stuffed in the pockets of his hoodie, and he’s staring at Sehun. The look he’s got on reminds Sehun of the times when they would hole up in a studio together after-hours, running through routines until Chanyeol could do them without stumbling over his own feet, and sometimes Sehun would look up to meet Chanyeol’s eyes in the mirror and it had felt the same as holding his hands too close to a fire, making his skin go hot and stinging all at once, until he looked away.  
  
It’s that kind of thing, Sehun thinks, that should have made him realize at least part of this... _thing_ between them a long time ago.  
  
Then, too soon and at the same time not soon enough, the door closes and Kyungsoo comes out into the kitchen, still looking a little put out that Sehun had kept him from his shower.  
  
Jongin pokes Sehun in the cheek again, pulling him from his thoughts and making him scowl. “If you’re psychic, then tell me what I’m going to say.”  
  
“I’m not actually psychic, you dumbass,” Sehun says, picking up a bit of egg between his fingers and smushing it onto the side of Jongin’s face as Hyeonkyun appears in the doorway, hoodie and cap in hand.  
  
Maybe, if Sehun were actually psychic, things with Chanyeol would be a whole lot simpler.  
  
-  
  
Sehun’s skin still prickles, like the scraping of a match against the rough edge of the box, whenever he’s around Chanyeol, and lunch and the MNET interview are like torture. He can feel whenever Chanyeol is looking at him and it makes it hard to think about anything else.  
  
Afterwards, he drags Jongin out for bubble tea, needing a break from the tension crowding his shoulders. Jongin makes him pay and then spends the whole time trying to perfect the art of balancing on the two back legs of his chair, which Sehun would think was really insensitive, except that it’s Jongin and unless he says something, Jongin will never notice that he’s... Sehun isn’t quite sure what he is, but it’s something less than happy, and closer to upset, and he hates the feeling.  
  
Puffing up his cheeks, Sehun blows out a loud breath. The action is very Chanyeol-like, Sehun realizes belatedly, and the thought makes him frown even more.  
  
Jongin, holding his drink in one hand and using the other to anchor himself on the table as he balances on half the legs of the chair, finally says something. “Dude, whatever apology you gave Chanyeol, it must have sucked. He’s still acting all strange. Do it again. Better.”  
  
“I’ve apologized a million times!” Sehun says. Maybe it just seems that way, but he’s sick of apologizing. Always being wrong is exhausting and this has been, quite literally, the longest day of Sehun’s life and he just wants it to end.  
  
Taking a sip of tea and sucking a few tapioca balls up the large straw, Jongin doesn’t seem convinced. “Well, maybe you ought to tell him you’re in love with him while you’re at it. Spare us the melodrama.”  
  
Sehun shoves at Jongin’s tipped chair with a foot under the table and Jongin loses his balance, tipping back onto the floor with a loud smash.  
  
Jongin’s tea spills all over him, making him sputter wetly, and when Jongin picks himself up, righting his chair again, Sehun keeps a tight hold on his cup. He’s had enough of tea-soaked sweatpants.  
  
Jongin is yelling at him, but Sehun can’t hear him, for some reason. All he can hear is his own heartbeat and the idea of being in love with Chanyeol, rattling around in his brain like an untuned brass band. “I’m not-” The words get stuck in his throat, because... because... Sehun clenches his hands into fists as Jongin brushes invisible dirt from his sweatpants and glares at him.  
  
“Please do not waste the breath to tell me you’re not,” Jongin says. “I have eyes. You guys lie in bed together and cuddle when you’re homesick, and all you did today was stare at his mouth.”  
  
“But-” Sehun says, and all the feelings are making him nauseous. “But-”  
  
Jongin looks profoundly disappointed. “You’re like the worst psychic ever,” he says. “What’s the point of seeing what happens in the future if you can’t even see what’s happening now?”  
  
It is not often that Jongin makes Sehun feel stupid, but Sehun, between the inability to catch his breath and the clammy feeling to his hands and the way his stomach is going to rebel, can admit that now is one of those rare times.  
  
“I’m in love with Chanyeol,” Sehun tests out, under his breath, and saying it hurts, kind of like shutting his hand in the car door hurts, but at the same time, it’s like he’s been holding his breath for a long time and now he can finally inhale. “I’m. _In love._ With Chanyeol.”  
  
“Damn,” he hears Jongin say, as he listens to his friend with half an ear, dabbing listlessly at his soaking sweats with a couple of thin napkins that tear and leave tiny bits of paper residue on the fabric, “if you’re not really psychic, there go my titty dreams.”  
  
“Jongin,” Sehun says faintly, and distractedly, licking at his lips, and swallowing around the lump in his throat. “Shut the hell up.”  
  
-  
  
Chanyeol looks different in love.  
  
Or. Well, he looks different to Sehun, when Sehun knows he’s in love with him.  
  
The curry is spicier than Sehun likes it, but he hardly notices. What he notices, instead, is the hesitant way that Chanyeol takes his customary seat next to Baekhyun at the dinner table, long legs stretching out and tangling with Sehun’s, invading each other’s space they way they’ve done since both of them had had their growth spurts. (They’d even done that together, Sehun thinks, dazedly, as Chanyeol’s bony ankle digs into his calf.)  
  
He also notices the way Chanyeol’s fingers delicately hold the chopsticks, because even if people see Chanyeol as big and clumsy, Sehun knows he’s also careful in everything, to make up for his lack of natural grace. And he notices the way Chanyeol’s eyes linger on Sehun’s throat when he swallows, and the way Chanyeol laughs at Sehun’s jokes even when they aren’t funny, and the way Chanyeol shivers when Sehun’s foot grazes his.  
  
Worst of all, Sehun notices the way he can’t take his own eyes off Chanyeol’s mouth, and that it feels like he’s overheating whenever Chanyeol does, well, anything, because Chanyeol is as warm as the oversized hoodie he always insists on wearing, and it’s almost too much for Sehun to bear.  
  
Once again, it’s Sehun’s turn to do the washing up, and Chanyeol helps him by bringing the dishes over to the sink in a huge, precarious stack. As he sets the various plates and bowls down, his chest presses to Sehun’s side, and his breath tickles Sehun’s cheek.  
  
“About earlier,” Chanyeol says, haltingly, and Sehun turns on the tap, letting the sound of the water cover the hitch in his breath. “When you said-”  
  
“I said never mind,” Sehun replies, and it comes out harsher than he means it to, which leaves him feeling guilty.  
  
Chanyeol takes a step back, and Sehun’s side is cold in his absence. “Okay,” Chanyeol says. “I just thought...” He’s silent, for a moment, and the only sound in the kitchen is the water splashing against the metal basin of the sink. “Good night, Sehun.”  
  
“Good night,” Sehun echoes, as Chanyeol leaves the room.  
  
When he climbs into his bed, shimmying under his blankets and pulling them up quickly over his bare shoulders, he fleetingly wonders what it would be like if Chanyeol were sleeping next to him. He pulls the covers over his head, and tries to tune out the nagging feeling that there’s so much more he should have said.  
  
#  
  
 **22**  
  
Sehun wakes up with the same pounding headache he went to sleep with, but he also wakes up thinking of Chanyeol. He sits up as Junmyeon comes through the door to wake him, standing before Junmyeon can come close enough to drip water in his face. “I’ve got it,” Sehun groans, scrubbing his hand over his face in exasperation.  
  
He’s so tired. Tired of this day, tired of having this fucking headache, and tired of all these feelings he’s never had to deal with before.  
  
He walks out into the hallway, not bothering with a shirt and heading toward the kitchen instead of the bathroom, hoping to miss Chanyeol, but he’s miscalculated, because the door of the bathroom opens, and this time it is Chanyeol who is running into him. Chanyeol trips, and then catches himself with both hands landing on Sehun’s shoulders, and Sehun can once again smell his shampoo, and his minty toothpaste, and the gentle scent of laundry detergent that clings to his clothes. Sehun’s hands come up to steady himself, clutching two handfuls of Chanyeol’s shirt at the chest, which pulls Chanyeol in closer. Their foreheads bump, and Sehun looks into Chanyeol’s eyes; they’re glassy and wide, and because he’s been caught off guard, nothing in his expression hidden. The way that Chanyeol is looking at him makes him feel like he’s been punched in the gut, because Chanyeol’s cheeks are pink from the shower and from embarrassment, and Sehun can feel his own cheeks flush in response.  
  
Chanyeol is soft, and warm, and damp, and maybe repeating the same day, over and over, has made Sehun a little reckless, because when the thought, heady and overwhelming, that he’d like to kiss Chanyeol, floods his mind, he just... does it. He tugs a little harder on Chanyeol’s shirt, tilts his chin up, and presses their lips together. Chanyeol squeaks, muscles tensing, but he doesn’t push Sehun away, so Sehun moves in closer, until Chanyeol finally melts into him, one hand sliding up to cup his neck as the other squeezes too tight on his shoulder.  
  
Chanyeol’s lips are smoother than he’d expected, but just as warm, and when Chanyeol sighs, mouth parting slightly, Sehun takes advantage, sucking Chanyeol’s lower lip into his mouth and biting at it. Chanyeol whimpers, and threads his fingers into Sehun’s hair, tugging the strands with his shaking hand. When Sehun’s tongue slips between Chanyeol’s lips, exploring the roof of Chanyeol’s mouth and tasting Chanyeol’s gums, Chanyeol sighs, and the sound is more like a relieved sob than an exhale.  
  
Then Chanyeol is pushing him back, until they crash into the wall, and Sehun bangs his elbows, grunting in pain. “Sorry,” Chanyeol mumbles into his mouth, lips falling off-center to kiss at the corner of Sehun’s.  
  
“Why are you _talking_?” Sehun growls, and drags Chanyeol closer, distractedly thinking he’s probably stretched the front of Chanyeol’s shirt beyond repair. Then he just kisses Chanyeol harder, as Chanyeol’s hand moves to frame his jaw. Sehun’s arms link around Chanyeol’s neck, pressing them chest to chest, and as Chanyeol mewls, as loud in this as he is in everything else, Sehun can feel their hearts beating in sync.  
  
“It’s too early for this,” Jongin says, and Sehun would roll his eyes, but he’s _busy_ , so he pulls away from Chanyeol just enough to say “go away,” before Chanyeol whines and uses the hand cradling Sehun’s jaw to bring him back in and seal their mouths together again.  
  
“Have you even brushed your teeth yet?” Jongin sounds the same as he did when he watched that series of documentaries on rare jungle parasites on SBS2; sickly fascinated. “Chanyeol needs to save some of that ecstasy for EXTACY.”  
  
Chanyeol’s hand, the one on Sehun’s shoulder, slides all the way down, burning along his bare chest before coming to rest on his waist, his thumb rubbing slow circles into the skin next to his belly button.  
  
“I’m still here,” Jongin says obnoxiously, and then: “Ow, ow, that’s my ear.”  
  
“Let’s leave Chanyeol and Sehun to work out their differences,” Baekhyun says sweetly, and then there’s the shuffling of feet, but Sehun is too absorbed in the way Chanyeol is sucking on his tongue to really care.  
  
“Since when is everyone gay?” he hears Jongin whine, as Baekhyun drags him away.  
  
“So,” Sehun says, when they break, Chanyeol’s nose squashing into his own, breath hot on Sehun’s slick mouth, “I really, really like you.”  
  
Chanyeol is looking at him like he’s said something amazing, but also like he wants to laugh. “I kind of figured.”  
  
“Oh, shut up,” Sehun says, and he kisses Chanyeol again.  
  
-  
  
Sehun doesn’t sulk as the buzzer shaves off half of his hair, or when the stylist is massaging in the fuchsia dye. He thinks his generally pleasant demeanor sort of freaks her out, because when he smiles at her one last time as he’s leaving, she gives a horrified shiver and clutches her scissors.  
  
Baekhyun, Jongin and Kyungsoo seem torn between teasing him about his haircut and teasing him about Chanyeol. “Maybe I should start offending girl group members,” Jongin says, during a quick water break, “if that’s how apologies work these days.”  
  
“I think,” Baekhyun says, “Sehun’s going to have to apologize to Chanyeol for his hair looking like that.”  
  
“Chanyeol likes me for my personality,” Sehun says with a tiny frown, and Kyungsoo pats him on the shoulder consolingly.  
  
“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Kyungsoo says, and Sehun feels a bit like Caesar in front of the Capitol, betrayed by the one he trusted most.  
  
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll be getting much sleep,” Jongin says, and Baekhyun cracks up as Sehun pretends to be upset. Really though, Sehun’s too happy to be upset, giddiness sloshing around in his stomach as he remembers Chanyeol’s goodbye kiss that morning when he left with Junmyeon for their photoshoot, with swollen lips and a smile that lit up his whole face.  
  
They get into the elevator to head to lunch, and it’s a completely different atmosphere when the doors open three floors too early to pick up Chanyeol and Junmyeon. Chanyeol immediately comes to his side, and he shyly slides his hand into Sehun’s pocket instead of his own, and tangles their fingers together.  
  
As everyone exits the elevator, Chanyeol holds on to Sehun’s wrist, pulling him back in as the doors close, and hemming him in against the steel wall. It’s cold against Sehun’s sweaty skin.  
  
“Did you miss me?” Chanyeol asks, and Sehun pulls on the strings of Chanyeol’s hood until it’s scrunched up around Chanyeol’s neck.  
  
“No,” Sehun says, but he smiles, tugs again at the strings, and it’s a clear invitation that Chanyeol doesn’t pass up.  
  
Sehun notices now, even more than that morning, how hot Chanyeol’s mouth is, slick as it slants across his, and the sounds Chanyeol makes echo around the elevator, raising the hairs on Sehun’s nape. Chanyeol moves to press kisses into Sehun’s jawline, supporting himself with a palm on the wall over Sehun’s shoulder. Sehun pushes his fingers into Chanyeol’s hair, holding him in place, and Chanyeol growls, low in his throat, and sucks at the place where Sehun’s jaw meets his neck.  
  
“I like your hair,” Chanyeol breathes against the hollow of his collar bone, the syllables making Sehun shiver as Chanyeol’s lips brush the skin, and it’s so sensitive that Sehun knows Chanyeol’s left a bruise. He slips his free hand up Sehun’s shirt. “You’d look good with any haircut.”  
  
His thigh shifts between Sehun’s, rubbing against Sehun’s crotch, and Sehun pulls Chanyeol’s hair in retaliation. “We don’t have time,” Sehun gasps, as Chanyeol’s thumb flicks across his nipple. He clutches at Chanyeol’s sweatshirt, feeling the shift of his shoulderblades beneath the fabric and wishing they did have time, because Chanyeol’s body feels so good molding into his own.  
  
“Later,” Chanyeol says, and Sehun’s stomach tightens because he doesn’t know what Chanyeol means by later and Sehun’s not sure if he’ll ever get there.  
  
-  
  
At the interview, Sehun ignores the host, preferring, instead, to let his eyes roam along the length Chanyeol’s legs, which look good despite the patchwork denim. Chanyeol is looking back, staring at the strip of bare ankle skin between Sehun’s pink tuxedo shoes and the rhinestoned hem of his paisley capris.  
  
The host, bored by Sehun’s inattention, fixates on Jongin instead, and he happily stares at her boobs throughout the show, answering her every question in detail.  
  
As Sehun leads Chanyeol off-set by the hand, Sehun swears he hears Jongin ask her for her phone number.  
  
-  
  
The way they fit together in Sehun’s bed is exactly the same way they fit together in the rest of their lives. Chanyeol is noisy and takes up too much room, but Sehun isn’t afraid to push and shove back until their legs are intertwined beneath the sheets, and they’re whispering back and forth about elbows and knees. They settle when Junmyeon tells them to go to sleep from his bed across the room, and Chanyeol buries his face in Sehun’s neck and breathes in, hair tickling at Sehun’s chin. Chanyeol slips the tips of his fingers under the waistband of Sehun’s pajamas, and murmurs “I’ve wanted to kiss you for a long time,” against his cheek, making Sehun laugh.  
  
“Then what are you waiting for?” Chanyeol raises his head and kisses him lightly, right at the edge of his mouth, before tucking himself back beneath Sehun’s chin. Sehun traces patterns across the expanse of Chanyeol’s back as Chanyeol falls asleep. Sehun fights his drowsiness as long as can, but in the end, it’s a futile battle, his eyelids growing heavier as Chanyeol’s heat seeps into his side.  
  
Sehun doesn’t want to lose this. It has taken him a long time to figure, but he’s finally gotten it right, and Chanyeol is here, and he wants Chanyeol to still be here in the morning. Sehun doesn’t want to fall asleep, because then he’ll wake up and live the same January 18th again.  
  
#  
  
Sehun wakes up with hair in his mouth, and an arm like a dead weight across his stomach. The room is still dark, but a glance tells him that Junmyeon’s bed is empty, and he uses his free hand to rub at his eyes. His headache is finally gone, but the way he’s slept has given him a crick in his neck. He’s annoyed until he realizes that this is _different_ , and that he’s finally woken up in today instead of yesterday.  
  
He attempts to sit upright, but Chanyeol is pinning him down, and whines when Sehun’s shoulder hits him in the jaw. “Too early,” Chanyeol groans. “Sleep more. Move later.” Chanyeol curves his arm more tightly around Sehun’s waist, pulling him down and in, and Sehun easily gives in, falling back into the mess of covers and long, wayward limbs.  
  
Relishing in the fact that he doesn’t know whether he’s late for something or not, Sehun nuzzles at Chanyeol’s cheek, a balloon of happiness inflating in his chest until he feels full with it, and it spills out onto his face as a smile.  
  
When Chanyeol’s finally ready to wake up, he rolls on top of Sehun and peppers his face with kisses, and Sehun feigns distaste, digging his fingers into Chanyeol’s side and tickling him until he falls off the bed with low-pitched squeals. “So mean,” Chanyeol says, a little bit of a rasp in his voice. “That’s going to leave a bruise.”  
  
“Good,” Sehun says, and then looks to the side, trying not to blush. “Maybe you’ll find someone willing to kiss it better. If you’re lucky.”  
  
“You’re going to kiss the bruise on my tailbone better?” Chanyeol asks teasingly, and Sehun frowns.  
  
“I did say _if you’re lucky_.”  
  
Chanyeol lunges, then, pulling at the sheets until they, and Sehun with them, come tumbling down to the floor next to him. Sehun shoves at Chanyeol until he falls backward, tangling them both in the sheets, and it reminds Sehun of being fifteen, and of being seventeen, only now, when Chanyeol blinks up at him with glowing eyes, Sehun can lean down and kiss him.  
  
-  
  
Breakfast has wrapped up by the time they stumble out from Sehun’s room, flattening each others’ hair but not able to hide overly pink lips and the bruise on Sehun’s throat.  
  
“Well, well, well,” Kyungsoo says, “glad you guys decided to join us.” Everyone looks up, save for Baekhyun, who seems totally invested in his mobile phone.  
  
“No, we’re not,” Jongin says, like Sehun holding Chanyeol’s hand is the most unacceptable turn of events he could possibly have envisioned. Sehun knows Jongin is pleased, though, because his eyes are smiling. “I’ll never be glad about anything ever again.”  
  
“What about the host of the program yesterday?” Junmyeon says, and Jongin’s whole face lights up.  
  
“She totally wanted the d,” Jongin says. “And totally gave me her number.”  
  
“Congratulations, Jongin,” Kyungsoo says. “Now you just have to muster the courage to actually call it.”  
  
Baekhyun looks up from his phone, raising one eyebrow and smirking. “Sehun, go put on a turtleneck. Hickeys are so tacky.”  
  
Sehun rebelliously pulls his shirt a little lower in the front, and Chanyeol stares at the revealed skin, like he’s looking for a place to leave the next mark.  
  
“Who’ve you been texting all morning?” Jongin asks. “I swear your phone’s been glued to your hand this week.”  
  
“My new girlfriend?” Baekhyun says, like the answer is obvious. “Duh.”  
  
Sehun starts with surprise. “Wait, who?”  
  
“Taeyeon.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “Excuse me, she prefers Taeyeon-seonbaenim.”  
  
Kyungsoo whistles, and Junmyeon laughs behind his hand as Jongin falls out of chair. Again. Sehun is starting to think he needs a seatbelt. “You guys didn’t know that?” Chanyeol asks, squeezing Sehun’s hand. “It’s been in the works for a while.”  
  
“You don’t know what I had to do to get her number,” Baekhyun says, and Sehun might have a few guesses. “Not that I didn’t completely enjoy the challenge.”  
  
“By the way, Sehun,” Junmyeon says, “not to be a buzzkill, but your teacher called, and she needs your homework by tomorrow.”  
  
“I’m not so bad at math,” Chanyeol says, “if you want some help.” Sehun isn’t sure he’ll be able to concentrate on calculus when there’s the much more interesting problem of getting into Chanyeol’s pants, but anything will be better than Junmyeon’s attempts.  
  
Jongin is still on floor, staring at Baekhyun like Baekhyun has cured cancer. “Dude, you have the hook-up? Set me up with Tiffany.” He pauses. “Wait. Since when are you _not_ gay?”  
  
“Jongin, please,” Baekhyun says, looking back at his phone with a grin. “Tiffany is way out of your league.”


End file.
